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BOOK 823.8.ST48 1894 v.8 c. 1
STEVENSON f WORKS OF
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This Edinburgh Edition consists of
one thousand and thirty-Jive copies
all numbered
No.AJ.9.
Vol. VIII. of issue : June 1895
THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
EDINBURGH EDITION
THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
TALES AND FANTASIES
VOLUME III
EDINBURGH
PRINTED BY T. AND A. CONSTABLE FOR
LONGMANS GREEN AND CO : CASSELL AND CO.
SEELEY AND CO : CHAS. SCRIBNER'S SONS
AND SOLD BY CHATTO AND WINDUS
PICCADILLY : LONDON
1895
V
«0
STRANGE CASE OF
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
THE MERRY MEN
AND OTHER TALES
AND FABLES
CONTENTS
PAGE
STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND
MR. HYDE .... I
THE MERRY MEN AND OTHER TALES
AND FABLES . . . .103
STRANGE CASE
OF DR. JEKYLL
AND MR. HYDE
8-A
First edition :
Longmans, Green and Co., 1886.
CONTENTS
Dedication
Story of the Door
Search for Mr. Hyde .
Dr. Jekyll was quite at ease .
The Carew Murder Case
Incident of the Letter
Remarkable Incident of Dr. Lanyon
Incident at the Window
The Last Night
Dr. Lany on's Narrative
Henry Jekyll's full Statement of the Case
PAGE
5
7
16<
27
30
36\
43 ,
48
50
)
67 v;
T7 {
TO KATHARINE BE MATTOS
It ''s ill to loose the. bands that God decreed to bind ;
Still will we be the children of the heather and the wind.
Far away from home, O ifs still for you and me
That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.
STORY OF THE DOOR
Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged
countenance, that was never lighted by a smile ;
cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse ; backward
in sentiment ; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet
somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when
the wine was to his taste, something eminently
human beaconed from his eye ; something indeed
which never found its way into his talk, but which
spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-
dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of
his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin
when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages ;
and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed
the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an
approved tolerance for others ; sometimes wondering,
almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits
involved in their misdeeds ; and in any extremity
inclined to help rather than to reprove. ' I incline
to Cain's heresy,' he used to say quaintly : ' I let my
brother go to the devil in his own way.' In this
character, it was frequently his fortune to be the
last reputable acquaintance and the last good influ-
ence in the lives of down-going men. And to such
7
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
as these, so long as they came about his chambers,
he never marked a shade of change in his de-
meanour.
No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson ; for
he was undemonstrative at the best, and even his
friendships seemed to be founded in a similar catho-
licity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest
man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from
the hands of opportunity ; and that was the lawyer's
way. His friends were those of his own blood, or
those whom he had known the longest ; his affec-
tions, like ivy, were the growth of time, they im-
plied no aptness in the object. Hence, no doubt,
the bond that united him to Mr. Richard Enfield,
his distant kinsman, the well-known man about
town. It was a nut to crack for many, what these
two could see in each other or what subject they
could find in common. It was reported by those
who encountered them in their Sunday walks that
they said nothing, looked singularly dull, and would
hail with obvious relief the appearance of a friend.
For all that, the two men put the greatest store by
these excursions, counted them the chief jewel of
each week, and not only set aside occasions of
pleasure, but even resisted the calls of business, that
they might enjoy them uninterrupted.
It chanced on one of these rambles that their way
led them down a by-street in a busy quarter of
London. The street was small, and what is called
quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on the week-
days. The inhabitants were all doing well, it
8
STORY OF THE DOOR
seemed, and all emulously hoping to do better still,
and laying out the surplus of their gains in coquetry;
so that the shop-fronts stood along that thorough-
fare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling
saleswomen. Even on Sunday, when it veiled its
more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of
passage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy
neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest ; and with its
freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses, and
general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly
caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.
Two doors from one corner on the left hand going
east, the line was broken by the entry of a court ;
and just at that point a certain sinister block of
building thrust forward its gable on the street. It
was two stories high ; showed no window, nothing
but a door on the lower story and a blind forehead
of discoloured wall on the upper ; and bore in every
feature the marks of prolonged and sordid negli-
gence. The door, which was equipped with neither
bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained.
Tramps slouched into the recess and struck matches
on the panels ; children kept shop upon the steps ;
the schoolboy had tried his knife on the mouldings ;
and for close on a generation no one had appeared
to drive away these random visitors or to repair
their ravages.
Mr. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other
side of the by-street ; but when they came abreast
of the entry the former lifted up his cane and
pointed.
9
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
' Did you ever remark that door ? ' he asked ; and
when his companion had replied in the affirmative,
' it is connected in my mind,' added he, ' with a very
odd story.'
' Indeed ? ' said Mr. Utterson, with a slight change
of voice, ' and what was that ? '
' Well, it was this way,' returned Mr. Enfield : ' I
was coming home from some place at the end of the
world, about three o'clock of a black winter morning,
and my way lay through a part of town where there
was literally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street
after street, and all the folks asleep— street after
street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as
empty as a church — till at last I got into that state
of mind when a man listens and listens and begins
to long for the sight of a policeman. All at once I
saw two figures : one a little man who was stumping
along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl
of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as
she was able down a cross street. AVell, sir, the two
ran into one another naturally enough at the corner ;
and then came the horrible part of the thing ; for
the man trampled calmly over the child's body and
left her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing
to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn't like a
man ; it was like some damned Juggernaut. I gave
a view-holloa, took to my heels, collared my gentle-
man, and brought him back to where there was
already quite a group about the screaming child.
He was perfectly cool, and made no resistance, but
gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the
10
STORY OF THE DOOR
sweat on me like running. The people who had
turned out were the girl's own family ; and pretty
soon, the doctor, for whom she had been sent, put
in his appearance. Well, the child was not much
the worse, more frightened, according to the Saw-
bones ; and there you might have supposed would
be an end to it. But there was one curious circum-
stance. I had taken a loathing to my gentleman
at first sight. So had the child's family, which was
only natural. But the doctor's case was what struck
me. He was the usual cut-and-dry apothecary, of
no particular age and colour, with a strong Edin-
burgh accent, and about as emotional as a bagpipe.
Well, sir, he was like the rest of us ; every time he
looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones turn
sick and white with the desire to kill him. I knew
what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in
mine ; and killing being out of the question, we did
the next best. We told the man we could and
would make such a scandal out of this as should
make his name stink from one end of London to the
other. If he had any friends or any credit, we
undertook that he should lose them. And all the
time, as we were pitching it in red-hot, we were
keeping the women off him as best we could, for
they were as wild as harpies. I never saw a circle
of such hateful faces ; and there was the man in the
middle, with a kind of black, sneering coolness —
frightened too, I could see that— but carrying it off",
sir, really like Satan. " If you choose to make
capital out of this accident," said he, " I am naturally
1 1
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
helpless. No gentleman but wishes to avoid a
scene," says he. "Name your figure." Well, we
screwed him up to a hundred pounds for the child's
family ; he would have clearly liked to stick out ;
but there was something about the lot of us
that meant mischief, and at last he struck. The
next thing was to get the money ; and where do
you think he carried us but to that place with the
door ? — whipped out a key, went in, and presently
came back with the matter of ten pounds in gold
and a cheque for the balance on Coutts's, drawn
payable to bearer and signed with a name that I
can't mention, though it 's one of the points of my
story, but it was a name at least very well known
and often printed. The figure was stiff; but the
signature was good for more than that, if it was
only genuine. I took the liberty of pointing out
to my gentleman that the whole business looked
apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life,
walk into a cellar-door at four in the morning and
come out of it with another man's cheque for close
upon a hundred pounds. But he was quite easy
and sneering. " Set your mind at rest," says he, " I
will stay with you till the banks open and cash the
cheque myself." So we all set off, the doctor, and
the child's father, and our friend and myself, and
passed the rest of the night in my chambers ; and
next day, when we had breakfasted, went in a body
to the bank. I gave in the cheque myself, and said
I had every reason to believe it was a forgery. Not
a bit of it. The cheque was genuine.'
12
STORY OF THE DOOR
' Tut-tut,' said Mr. Utterson.
' I see you feel as I do,' said Mr. Enfield. ' Yes,
it's a bad story. For my man was a fellow that
nobody could have to do with, a really damnable
man ; and the person that drew the cheque is the
very pink of the proprieties, celebrated too, and
(what makes it worse) one of your fellows who do
what they call good. Black-mail, I suppose ; an
honest man paying through the nose for some of
the capers of his youth. Black Mail House is what
I call that place with the door, in consequence.
Though even that, you know, is far from explaining
all,' he added, and with the words fell into a vein of
musing.
From this he was recalled by Mr. Utterson asking
rather suddenly : ' And you don't know if the drawer
of the cheque lives there ? '
' A likely place, isn't it ? ' returned Mr. Enfield.
' But I happen to have noticed his address ; he lives
in some square or other.'
' And you never asked about — the place with the
door ? ' said Mr. Utterson.
4 No, sir : I had a delicacy,' was the reply. ' I feel
very strongly about putting questions ; it partakes
too much of the style of the day of judgment. You
start a question, and it 's like starting a stone.
You sit quietly on the top of a hill ; and away the
stone goes, starting others ; and presently some
bland old bird (the last you would have thought of)
is knocked on the head in his own back-garden and
the family have to change their name. No, sir, I
13
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
make it a rule of mine : the more it looks like Queer
Street, the less I ask.'
' A very good rule too,' said the lawyer.
' But I have studied the place for myself,' con-
tinued Mr. Enfield. ' It seems scarcely a house.
There is no other door, and nobody goes in or out
of that one but, once in a great while, the gentleman
of my adventure. There are three windows looking
on the court on the first floor ; none below ; the
windows are always shut, but they 're clean. And
then there is a chimney which is generally smoking ;
so somebody must live there. And yet it s not so
sure ; for the buildings are so packed together about
that court that it 's hard to say where one ends and
another begins.'
The pair walked on again for a while in silence ;
and then, ' Enfield,' said Mr. Utterson, ' that 's a
good rule of yours.'
' Yes, I think it is,' returned Enfield.
' But for all that,' continued the lawyer, ' there 's
one point I want to ask : I want to ask the name of
that man who walked over the child.'
' Well,' said Mr. Enfield, ' I can't see what harm
it would do. He was a man of the name of Hyde.'
' Hm,' said Mr. Utterson. ' AVhat sort of a man
is he to see ? '
' He is not easy to describe. There is something
wrong with his appearance ; something displeasing,
something downright detestable. I never saw a man
I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must
be deformed somewhere ; he gives a strong feeling
14
STORY OF THE DOOR
of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point.
He 's an extraordinary-looking man, and yet I really
can name nothing out of the way. No, sir ; I can
make no hand of it ; I can't describe him. And it 's
not want of memory ; for I declare I can see him
this moment'
Mr. Utterson again walked some way in silence
and obviously under a weight of consideration.
' You are sure he used a key ? ' he inquired at last.
' My dear sir . . . ' began Enfield, surprised out of
himself.
' Yes, I know,' said Utterson ; ' I know it must
seem strange. The fact is, if I do not ask you the
name of the other party it is because I know it
already. You see, Richard, your tale has gone
home. If you have been inexact in any point you
had better correct it.'
' I think you might have warned me,' returned
the other with a touch of sullenness. ' But I have
been pedantically exact, as you call it. The fellow
had a key, and what 's more, he has it still. I saw
him use it not a week ago.'
Mr. Utterson sighed deeply but said never a
word ; and the young man presently resumed.
' Here is another lesson to say nothing,' said he. ' I
am ashamed of my long tongue. Let us make a
bargain never to refer to this again.'
' With all my heart,' said the lawyer. ' I shake
hands on that, Richard.'
15
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE
That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his
bachelor house in sombre spirits and sat down to
dinner without relish. It was his custom of a
Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by
the fire, a volume of some dry divinity on his read-
ing-desk, until the clock of the neighbouring church
rang out the hour of twelve, when he would go
soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night, how-
ever, as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took
up a candle and went into his business-room. There
he opened his safe, took from the most private part
of it a document indorsed on the envelope as Dr.
Jekyll's Will, and sat down with a clouded brow to
study its contents. The will was holograph, for Mr.
Utterson, though he took charge of it now that it
was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in
the making of it ; it provided not only that, in case
of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L.,
LL.D., F.R.S., etc., all his possessions were to pass
into the hands of his ' friend and benefactor Edward
Hyde,' but that in case of Dr. Jekyll's ' disappear-
ance or unexplained absence for any period exceed-
ing three calendar months,' the said Edward Hyde
should step into the said Henry Jekyll's shoes
without further delay and free from any burthen or
obligation, beyond the payment of a few small sums
to the members of the doctor's household. This
document had long been the lawyer's eyesore. It
16
SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE
offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the
sane and customary sides of life, to whom the fanci-
ful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his
ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indigna-
tion ; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge.
It was already bad enough when the name was but
a name of which he could learn no more. It was
worse when it began to be clothed upon with
detestable attributes ; and out of the shifting, insub-
stantial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there
leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a
fiend.
' I thought it was madness,' he said, as he replaced
the obnoxious paper in the safe, ' and now I begin to
fear it is disgrace.'
With that he blew out his candle, put on a great-
coat, and set forth in the direction of Cavendish
Square, that citadel of medicine, where his friend,
the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received
his crowding patients. ' If any one knows, it will be
Lanyon,' he had thought.
The solemn butler knew and welcomed him ; he
was subjected to no stage of delay, but ushered
direct from the door to the dining-room, where Dr.
Lanyon sat alone over his wine. This was a hearty,
healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock
of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and
decided manner. At sight of Mr. Utterson, he
sprang up- from his chair and welcomed him with
both hands. The geniality, as was the way of the
man, was somewhat theatrical to the eye ; but it
8— b 17
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
reposed on genuine feeling. For these two were old
friends, old mates both at school and college, both
thorough respecters of themselves and of each
other, and, what does not always follow, men who
thoroughly enjoyed each other's company.
After a little rambling talk, the lawyer led up to the
subject which so disagreeably preoccupied his mind.
' I suppose, Lanyon,' said he, ' you and I must be
the two oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has ? '
' I wish the friends were younger,' chuckled Dr.
Lanyon. ' But I suppose we are. And what of
that ? I see little of him now.'
' Indeed ? ' said Utterson. ' I thought you had a
bond of common interest.'
' We had,' was the reply. ' But it is more than
ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for
me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind ; and
though of course I continue to take an interest in
him for old sake's sake, as they say, I see and I have
seen devilish little of the man. Such unscientific
balderdash,' added the doctor, flushing suddenly
purple, 'would have estranged Damon and Pythias.'
This little spirt of temper was somewhat of a relief
to Mr. Utterson. ' They have only differed on some
point of science,' he thought; and being a man of
no scientific passions (except in the matter of con-
veyancing) he even added : ' It is nothing worse
than that ! ' He gave his friend a few seconds to
recover his composure, and then approached the
question he had come to put. ' Did you ever come
across a protege of his — one Hyde ? ' he asked.
18
SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE
' Hyde ? ' repeated Lanyon. ' No. Never heard
of him. Since my time.'
That was the amount of information that the
lawyer carried back with him to the great, dark bed
on which he tossed to and fro, until the small hours
of the morning began to grow large. It was a night
of little ease to his toiling mind, toiling in mere
darkness and besieged by questions.
Six o'clock struck on the bells of the church that
was so conveniently near to Mr. Utterson's dwelling,
and still he was digging at the problem. Hitherto
it had touched him on the intellectual side alone ;
but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather
enslaved ; and as he lay and tossed in the gross
darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr.
Enfield's tale went by before his mind in a scroll of
lighted pictures. He would be aware of the great
field of lamps of a nocturnal city ; then of the figure
of a man walking swiftly ; then of a child running
from the doctor's ; and then these met, and that
human Juggernaut trod the child down and passed
on regardless of her screams. Or else he would see
a room in a rich house, where his friend lay asleep,
dreaming and smiling at his dreams ; and then the
door of that room would be opened, the curtains of
the bed plucked apart, the sleeper recalled, and lo !
there would stand by his side a figure to whom
power was given, and even at that dead hour he
must rise and do its bidding. The figure in these
two phases haunted the lawyer all night ; and if at
any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide
19
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move
the more swiftly and still the more swiftly, even to
dizziness, through wider labyrinths of lamplighted
city, and at every street-corner crush a child and
leave her screaming. And still the figure had no
face by which he might know it ; even in his dreams,
it had no face, or one that baffled him and melted
before his eyes ; and thus it was that there sprang
up and grew apace in the lawyer's mind a singularly
strong, almost an inordinate, curiosity to behold the
features of the real Mr. Hyde. If he could but
once set eyes on him, he thought the mystery would
lighten and perhaps roll altogether away, as was the
habit of mysterious things when well examined.
He might see a reason for his friend's strange pre-
ference or bondage (call it which you please) and
even for the startling clauses of the will. And at
least it would be a face worth seeing : the face of
a man who was without bowels of mercy : a face
which had but to show itself to raise up, in the mind
of the unimpressionable Enfield, a spirit of enduring
hatred.
From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to
haunt the door in the bystreet of shops. In the
morning before office hours, at noon when business
was plenty and time scarce, at night under the face
of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all
hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be
found on his chosen post
' If he be Mr. Hyde,' he had thought, ' I shall be
Mr. Seek.'
20
SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE
And at last his patience was rewarded. It was a
fine dry night ; frost in the air ; the streets as clean
as a ballroom floor ; the lamps, unshaken by any
wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow.
By ten o'clock, when the shops were closed, the
bystreet was very solitary and, in spite of the low
growl of London from all round, very silent. Small
sounds carried far ; domestic sounds out of the
houses were clearly audible on either side of the
roadway ; and the rumour of the approach of any
passenger preceded him by a long time. Mr. Utter-
son had been some minutes at his post, when he was
aware of an odd, light footstep drawing near. In
the course of his nightly patrols he had long grown
accustomed to the quaint effect with which the
footfalls of a single person, while he is still a great
way off, suddenly spring out distinct from the vast
hum and clatter of the city. Yet his attention had
never before been so sharply and decisively arrested ;
and it was with a strong, superstitious prevision of
success that he withdrew into the entry of the court.
The steps drew swiftly nearer, and swelled out
suddenly louder as they turned the end of the street.
The lawyer, looking forth from the entry, could soon
see what manner of man he had to deal with. He
was small and very plainly dressed, and the look of
him, even at that distance, went somehow strongly
against the watcher's inclination. But he made
straight for the door, crossing the roadway to save
time ; and as he came, he drew a key from his pocket
like one approaching home.
21
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
Mr. Utterson stepped out and touched him on the
shoulder as he passed. ' Mr. Hyde, I think ? '
Mr. Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of
the breath. But his fear was only momentary ; and
though he did not look the lawyer in the face, he
answered coolly enough : ' That is my name. What
do you want ? '
' I see you are going in,' returned the lawyer.
' I am an old friend of Dr. Jekyll's — Mr. Utterson
of Gaunt Street — you must have heard my name ;
and meeting you so conveniently, I thought you
might admit me.'
' You will not find Dr. Jekyll ; he is from home,'
replied Mr. Hyde, blowing in the key. And then
suddenly, but still without looking up, ' How did
you know me ? ' he asked.
4 On your side,' said Mr. Utterson, ' will you do
me a favour ? '
' With pleasure,' replied the other. ' What shall
it be ? '
' Will you let me see your face ? ' asked the lawyer.
Mr. Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then, as if
upon some sudden reflection, fronted about with an
air of defiance ; and the pair stared at each other
pretty fixedly for a few seconds. ' Now I shall
know you again,' said Mr. Utterson. ' It may be
useful.'
' Yes,' returned Mr. Hyde, ' it is as well we have
met ; and a p?~opos, you should have my address. '
And he gave a number of a street in Soho.
' Good God ! ' thought Mr. Utterson, ' can he too
22
SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE
have been thinking of the will ? ' Hut he kept his
feelings to himself and only grunted in acknowledg-
ment of the address.
' And now,' said the other, ' how did you know
me?'
' By description,' was the reply.
' Whose description ? '
' We have common friends,' said Mr. Utterson.
' Common friends ? ' echoed Mr. Hyde, a little
hoarsely. ' Who are they ? '
' Jekyll, for instance,' said the lawyer.
' He never told you,' cried Mr. Hyde, with a flush
of anger. ' I did not think you would have lied.'
' Come,' said Mr. Utterson, ' that is not fitting
language. '
The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh ; and
the next moment, with extraordinary quickness, he
had unlocked the door and disappeared into the
house.
The lawyer stood a while when Mr. Hyde had left
him, the picture of disquietude. Then he began
slowly to mount the street, pausing every step or
two and putting his hand to his brow like a man
in mental perplexity. The problem he was thus
debating as he walked was one of a class that is
rarely solved. Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he
gave an impression of deformity without any name-
able malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he
had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of
murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and
he spoke with a husky, whispering, and somewhat
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
broken voice ; all these were points against him, but
not all of these together could explain the hitherto
unknown disgust, loathing, and fear with which Mr.
Utterson regarded him. ' There must be something
else,' said the perplexed gentleman. ' There is
something more, if I could find a name for it God
bless me, the man seems hardly human ! Something
troglodytic, shall we say ? or can it be the old story
of Dr. Fell ? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul
that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its
clay continent ? The last, I think ; for, O my poor
old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature
upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.'
Round the corner from the bystreet there was a
square of ancient, handsome houses, now for the
most part decayed from their high estate and let
in flats and chambers to all sorts and conditions of
men : map-engravers, architects, shady lawyers, and
the agents of obscure enterprises. One house, how-
ever, second from the corner, was still occupied
entire ; and at the door of this, which wore a
great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now
plunged in darkness except for the fan-light, Mr.
Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed
elderly servant opened the door.
' Is Dr. Jekyll at home, Poole ? ' asked the lawyer.
' I will see, Mr. Utterson,' said Poole, admitting
the visitor, as he spoke, into a large, low-roofed,
comfortable hall, paved with flags, warmed (after the
fashion of a country house) by a bright, open fire,
and furnished with costly cabinets of oak. ' Will
24
SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE
you wait here by the fire, sir ? or shall 1 give you a
light iu the dining-room ? '
' Here, thank you,' said the lawyer, and he drew
near and leaned on the tall fender. This hall, in
which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy of his
friend the doctor's ; and Utterson himself was wont
to speak of it as the pleasantest room in London.
But to-night there was a shudder in his blood ; the
face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory ; he felt
(what was rare with him) a nausea and distaste of
life ; and in the gloom of his spirits he seemed to
read a menace in the flickering of the firelight on
the polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the
shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief,
when Poole presently returned to announce that
Dr. Jekyll was gone out.
' I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting-
room door, Poole,' he said. ' Is that right, when
Dr. Jekyll is from home ? '
'Quite right, Mr. Utterson, sir,' replied the
servant. ' Mr. Hyde has a key.'
'Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in
that young man, Poole,' resumed the other musingly.
'Yes, sir, he do indeed,' said Poole. ' We have
all orders to obey him.'
' I do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde ? ' asked
Utterson.
' O dear no, sir. He never dines here,' replied
the butler. ' Indeed we see very little of him on
this side of the house ; he mostly comes and goes by
the laboratory.'
25
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
' Well, good-night, Poole.'
'Good-night, Mr. Utterson.'
And the lawyer set out homeward with a very
heavy heart. ' Poor Hany Jekyll,' he thought, ' my
mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He was
wild when he was young ; a long while ago, to be
sure ; but in the law of God there is no statute of
limitations. Ay, it must be that ; the ghost of
some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace :
punishment coming, pede claudo, years after memory
has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault'
And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded
a while on his own past, groping in all the corners of
memory, lest by chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an
old iniquity should leap to light there. His past
was fairly blameless ; few men could read the rolls
of their life with less apprehension ; yet he was
humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had
done, and raised up again into a sober and fearful
gratitude by the many that he had come so near to
doing, yet avoided. And then, by a return on his
former subject, he conceived a spark of hope. ' This
Master Hyde, if he were studied,' thought he, ' must
have secrets of his own : black secrets, by the look
of him ; secrets compared to which poor Jekyll's
worst would be like sunshine. Things cannot con-
tinue as they are. It turns me cold to think of
this creature stealing like a thief to Harry's bedside ;
poor Harry, what a wakening ! And the danger of
it ; for if this Hyde suspects the existence of the
will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Ay, I must
26
SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE
put my shoulder to the wheel — if Jekyll will but
let me,' he added, 'if Jekyll will only let me.' For
once more he saw before his mind's eye, as clear as
a transparency, the strange clauses of the will.
DR. JEKYLL WAS QUITE AT EASE
A fortnight later, by excellent good fortune, the
doctor gave one of his pleasant dinners to some five
or six old cronies, all intelligent, reputable men, and
all judges of good wine ; and Mr. Utterson so con-
trived that he remained behind after the others had
departed. This was no new arrangement, but a
thing that had befallen many scores of times.
Where Utterson was liked, he was liked well.
Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the
light-hearted and the loose-tongued had already
their foot on the threshold ; they liked to sit a while
in his unobtrusive company, practising for solitude,
sobering their minds in the man's rich silence after
the expense and strain of gaiety. To this rule Dr.
Jekyll was no exception ; and as he now sat on the
opposite side of the fire — a large, well-made, smooth-
faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast
perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness
— you could see by his looks that he cherished for
Mr. Utterson a sincere and warm affection.
' I have been wanting to speak to you, Jekyll,'
began the latter. ' You know that will of yours ? '
27
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
A close observer might have gathered that the
topic was distasteful ; but the doctor carried it off
gaily. ' My poor Utterson,' said he, ' you are un-
fortunate in such a client. I never saw a man so
distressed as you were by my will ; unless it were
that hide-bound pedant Lanyon, at what he called
my scientific heresies. Oh, I know he 's a good fellow
— you needn't frown — an excellent fellow, and I
always mean to see more of him ; but a hide-bound
pedant for all that ; an ignorant, blatant pedant.
I was never more disappointed in any man than
Lanyon.'
' You know I never approved of it,' pursued
Utterson, ruthlessly disregarding the fresh topic.
'My will? Yes, certainly, I know that,' said the
doctor, a trifle sharply. 'You have told me so.'
' Well, I tell you so again,' continued the lawyer.
' I have been learning something of young Hyde.'
The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale
to the very lips, and there came a blackness about
his eyes. ' I do not care to hear more,' said he.
' This is a matter I thought we had agreed to drop.'
' What I heard was abominable,' said Utterson.
' It can make no change. You do not understand
my position,' returned the doctor, with a certain
incoherency of manner. ' I am painfully situated,
Utterson ; my position is a very strange — a very
strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot
be mended by talking.'
' Jekyll,' said Utterson, ' you know me : I am a
man to be trusted. Make a clean breast of this in
28
DR. JEKYLL QUITE AT EASE
confidence ; and I make no doubt I can get yon out
of it.'
' My good Utterson,' said the doctor, ' this is very
good of you, this is downright good of you, and I
cannot find words to thank you in. I believe you
fully ; I would trust you before any man alive — ay,
before myself, if I could make the choice ; but
indeed it isn't what you fancy ; it is not so bad as
that ; and just to put your good heart at rest, I will
tell you one thing : the moment I choose, I can be
rid of Mr. Hyde. I give you my hand upon that ;
and I thank you again and again ; and I will just
add one little word, Utterson, that I 'm sure you '11
take in good part : this is a private matter, and I
beg of you to let it sleep.'
Utterson reflected a little, looking in the fire.
• I have no doubt you are perfectly right,' he said
at last, getting to his feet.
' Well, but since we have touched upon this
business, and for the last time I hope,' continued the
doctor, ' there is one point I should like you to
understand. I have really a very great interest in
poor Hyde. I know you have seen him; he told me
so ; and I fear he was rude. But I do sincerely take a
great, a very great interest in that young man ; and if
I am taken away, Utterson, I wish you to promise
me that you will bear with him and get his rights for
him. I think you would, if you knew all ; and it
would be a weight off* my mind if you would promise.'
* I can't pretend that I shall ever like him,' said
the lawyer.
29
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
' I don't ask that,' pleaded Jekyll, laying his hand
upon the other's arm ; ' I only ask for justice ; I
only ask you to help him for my sake, when I am
no longer here.'
Utterson heaved an irrepressible sigh. 'Well,'
said he, ' I promise. '
THE CAREW MURDER CASE
Nearly a year later, in the month of October 18 — ,
London was startled by a crime of singular ferocity,
rendered all the more notable by the high position
of the victim. The details were few and startling.
A maid-servant living alone in a house not far from
the river had gone upstairs to bed about eleven.
Although a fog rolled over the city in the small
hours, the early part of the night was cloudless,
and the lane, which the maid's window overlooked,
was brilliantly lit by the full moon. It seems she
was romantically given, for she sat down upon her
box, which stood immediately under the window,
and fell into a dream of musing. Never (she used
to say, with streaming tears, when she narrated that
experience), never had she felt more at peace with
all men or thought more kindly of the world. And
as she so sat she became aware of an aged and
beautiful gentleman with' white hair drawing near
along the lane : and advancing to meet him another
and very small gentleman, to whom at first she paid
less attention. When they had come within speech
30
THE CAREW MURDER CASE
(which was just under the maids eyes) the older man
bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty
manner of politeness. It did not seem as if the
subject of his address were of great importance ;
indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared as
if he were only inquiring his way ; but the moon
shone on his face as he spoke, and the girl was
pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such an
innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet
with something high too, as of a well-founded self-
content. Presently her eye wandered to the other,
and she was surprised to recognise in him a certain
Mr. Hyde, who had once visited her master, and for
whom she had conceived a dislike. He had in his
hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling ; but
he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with
an ill-contained impatience. And then all of a
sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger,
stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and
carrying on (as the maid described it) like a mad-
man. The old gentleman took a step back, with
the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt ;
and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and
clubbed him to the earth. And next moment, with
ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under
foot, and hailing down a storm of blows, under which
the bones were audibly shattered and the body
jumped upon the roadway. At the horror of these
sights and sounds the maid fainted.
It was two o'clock when she came to herself and
called for the police. The murderer was gone long
3i
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
ago ; but there lay his victim in the middle of the
lane, incredibly mangled. The stick with which the
deed had been done, although it was of some rare
and very tough and heavy wood, had broken in the
middle under the stress of this insensate cruelty ;
and one splintered half had rolled in the neighbour-
ing gutter — the other, without doubt, had been
carried away by the murderer. A purse and a gold
watch were found upon the victim ; but no cards
or papers, except a sealed and stamped envelope,
which he had been probably carrying to the post,
and which bore the name and address of Mr. Utter-
son.
This was brought to the lawyer the next morning
before he was out of bed ; and he had no sooner
seen it, and been told the circumstances, than he
shot out a solemn lip. ' I shall say nothing till I
have seen the body,' said he ; ' this may be very
serious. Have the kindness to wait while I dress.'
And with the same grave countenance he hurried
through his breakfast and drove to the police station,
whither the body had been carried. As soon as he
came into the cell, he nodded.
' Yes,' said he, ' I recognise him. I am sorry to
say that this is Sir Danvers Carew.'
' Good God, sir,' exclaimed the officer, ' is it
possible ? ' And the next moment his eye lighted
up with professional ambition. ' This will make a
deal of noise,' he said. ' And perhaps you can help
us to the man.' And he briefly narrated what the
maid had seen, and showed the broken stick.
32
THE CAREW MURDER CASE
Mr. Utterson had already quailed at the name of
Hyde ; but when the stick was laid before him he
could doubt no longer ; broken and battered as it
was, he recognised it for one that he had himself
presented many years before to Henry Jekyll.
' Is this Mr. Hyde a person of small stature ? ' he
inquired.
' Particularly small and particularly wicked-look-
ing, is what the maid calls him,' said the officer.
Mr. Utterson reflected ; and then, raising his
head, ' If you will come with me in my cab,' he said,
' I think I can take you to his house.'
It was by this time about nine in the morning,
and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-
coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was
continually charging and routing these embattled
vapours ; so that as the cab crawled from street to
street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvellous number of
degrees and hues of twilight ; for here it would be
dark like the back-end of evening ; and there would
be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of
some strange conflagration ; and here, for a moment,
the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard
shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirl-
ing wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under
these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and
slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never
been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to
combat this mournful re-invasion of darkness, seemed,
in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a
nightmare. The thoughts of his mind, besides, were
8-c 33
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
of the gloomiest dye ; and when he glanced at the
companion of his drive, he was conscious of some
touch of that terror of the law and the law's officers
which may at times assail the most honest.
As the cab drew up before the address indicated,
the fog lifted a little and showed him a dingy street,
a gin-palace, a low French eating-house, a shop for
the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads,
many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and
many women of many different nationalities passing
out, key in hand, to have a morning glass ; and the
next moment the fog settled down again upon that
part, as brown as umber, and cut him off from his
blackguardly surroundings. This was the home of
Henry Jekyll's favourite ; of a man who was heir to
a quarter of a million sterling.
An ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman
opened the door. She had an evil face, smoothed
by hypocrisy ; but her manners were excellent.
Yes, she said, this was Mr. Hyde's, but he was not
at home ; he had been in that night very late, but
had gone away again in less than an hour ; there
was nothing strange in that; his habits were very
irregular, and he was often absent; for instance, it
was nearly two months since she had seen him till
yesterday.
1 Very well then, we wish to see his rooms,' said
the lawyer ; and when the woman began to declare
it was impossible, ' I had better tell you who this
person is,' he added. ' This is Inspector Newcomen
of Scotland Yard.'
34
THE CAREW MURDER CASE
A flash of odious joy appeared upon the woman's
face. ' Ah ! ' said she, ' he is in trouble ! What has
he done ? '
Mr. Utterson and the inspector exchanged glances.
' He don't seem a very popular character,' observed
the latter. 'And now, my good woman, just let me
and this gentleman have a look about us.'
In the whole extent of the house, which but for
the old woman remained otherwise empty, Mr. Hyde
had only used a couple of rooms ; but these were
furnished with luxury and good taste. A closet
was filled with wine ; the plate was of silver, the
napery elegant ; a good picture hung upon the walls,
a gift (as Utterson supposed) from Henry Jekyll,
who was much of a connoisseur ; and the carpets
were of many plies and agreeable in colour. At this
moment, however, the rooms bore every mark of
having been recently and hurriedly ransacked ;
clothes lay about the floor, with their pockets inside
out ; lockfast drawers stood open ; and on the hearth
there lay a pile of grey ashes, as though many papers
had been burned. From these embers the inspector
disinterred the butt-end of a green cheque-book,
which had resisted the action of the fire ; the other
half of the stick was found behind the door ; and as
this clinched his suspicions, the officer declared him-
self delighted. A visit to the bank, where several
thousand pounds were found to be lying to the
murderer's credit, completed his gratification.
' You may depend upon it, sir,' he told Mr. Utter-
son : ' I have him in my hand. He must have lost
35
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
his head, or he never would have left the stick or,
above all, burned the cheque-book. Why, money 's
life to the man. We have nothing to do but wait
for him at the bank, and get out the handbills.'
This last, however, was not so easy of accomplish-
ment ; for Mr. Hyde had numbered few familiars —
even the master of the servant-maid had only seen
him twice ; his family could nowhere be traced ; he
had never been photographed ; and the few who
could describe him differed widely, as common
observers will. Only on one point were they agreed ;
and that was the haunting sense of unexpressed
deformity with which the fugitive impressed his
beholders.
INCIDENT OF THE LETTER
It was late in the afternoon when Mr. Utterson
found his way to Dr. Jekyll's door, where he was
at once admitted by Poole, and carried down by the
kitchen offices and across a yard which had once
been a garden, to the building which was indifferently
known as the laboratory or the dissecting-rooms.
The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of
a celebrated surgeon ; and, his own tastes being rather
chemical than anatomical, had changed the destina-
tion of the block at the bottom of the garden. It
was the first time that the lawyer had been received
in that part of his friend's quarters ; and he eyed the
dingy windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed
36
INCIDENT OF THE LETTER
round with a distasteful sense of strangeness as he
crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students
and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden
with chemical apparatus, the floor strewn with crates
and littered with packing straw, and the light falling
dimly through the foggy cupola. At the farther
end, a flight of stairs mounted to a door covered
with red baize ; and through this, Mr. Utterson was
at last received into the doctor's cabinet. It was a
large room, fitted round with glass presses, furnished,
among other things, with a cheval-glass and a
business-table, and looking out upon the court by
three dusty windows barred with iron. The fire
burned in the grate ; a lamp was set lighted on the
chimney shelf, for even in the houses the fog began
to lie thickly ; and there, close up to the warmth,
sat Dr. Jekyll, looking deadly sick. He did not rise
to meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand and
bade him welcome in a changed voice.
' And now,' said Mr. Utterson, as soon as Poole
had left them, ' you have heard the news ? '
The doctor shuddered. ' They were crying it in
the square,' he said. ' I heard them in my dining-
room.'
' One word,' said the lawyer. ' Carew was my
client, but so are you, and I want to know what I
am doing. You have not been mad enough to hide
this fellow?'
' Utterson, I swear to God,' cried the doctor, ' I
swear to God I will never set eyes on him again. I
bind my honour to you that I am done with him
37
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
in this world. It is all at an end. And indeed he
does not want my help ; you do not know him as I
do ; he is safe, he is quite safe ; mark my words, he
will never more be heard of.'
The lawyer listened gloomily ; he did not like his
friend's feverish manner. ' You seem pretty sure
of him,' said he ; ' and for your sake, I hope you
may be right. If it came to a trial your name might
appear.'
' I am quite sure of him,' replied Jekyll ; ' I have
grounds for certainty that I cannot share with any
one. But there is one thing on which you may
advise me. I have — I have received a letter ; and
I am at a loss whether I should show it to the police.
I should like to leave it in your hands, Utterson ;
you would judge wisely, I am sure ; I have so great
a trust in you.'
'You fear, I suppose, that it might lead to his
detection ? ' asked the lawyer.
' No,' said the other. ' I cannot say that I care
what becomes of Hyde ; I am quite done with him.
I was thinking of my own character, which this hate-
ful business has rather exposed.'
Utterson ruminated a while ; he was surprised at
his friend's selfishness, and yet relieved by it. ' Well,'
said he at last, 'let me see the letter.'
The letter was written in an odd, upright hand
and signed ' Edward Hyde ' : and it signified, briefly
enough, that the writer's benefactor, Dr. Jekyll,
whom he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand
generosities, need labour under no alarm for his safety,
38
INCIDENT OF THE LETTER
as he had means of escape on which he placed a
sure dependence. The lawyer liked this letter well
enough ; it put a better colour on the intimacy than
he had looked for ; and he blamed himself for some
of his past suspicions.
' Have you the envelope ? ' he asked.
' I burned it,' replied .Tekyll, ' before I thought
what I was about. But it bore no postmark. The
note was handed in.'
' Shall I keep this and sleep upon it ? ' asked
Utterson.
' I wish you to judge for me entirely,' was the
reply. ' I have lost confidence in myself.'
'Well, I shall consider,' returned the lawyer. —
' And now one word more : it was Hyde who dictated
the terms in your will about that disappearance ? '
The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faint-
ness ; he shut his mouth tight and nodded.
' I knew it,' said Utterson. ' He meant to murder
you. You have had a fine escape.'
' I have had what is far more to the purpose,'
returned the doctor solemnly : ' I have had a lesson
— O God, Utterson, what a lesson I have had ! '
And he covered his face for a moment with his
hands.
On his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a
word or two with Poole. ' By the by,' said he,
' there was a letter handed in to-day : what was the
messenger like ? ' But Poole was positive nothing
had come except by post ; ' and only circulars by
that,' he added.
39
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
This news sent off the visitor with his fears re-
newed. Plainly the letter had come by the labora-
tory door ; possibly, indeed, it had been written in
the cabinet ; and if that were so, it must be dif-
ferently judged, and handled with the more caution.
The newsboys, as he went, were crying themselves
hoarse along the footways : ' Special edition. Shock-
ing murder of an M.P.' That was the funeral
oration of one friend and client; and he could not
help a certain apprehension lest the good name of
another should be sucked down in the eddy of the
scandal. It was, at least, a ticklish decision that he
had to make ; and, self-reliant as he was by habit, he
began to cherish a longing for advice. It was not to
be had directly ; but perhaps, he thought, it might
be fished for.
Presently after, he sat on one side of his own
hearth, with Mr. Guest, his head clerk, upon the
other, and midway between, at a nicely calculated
distance from the fire, a bottle of a particular old
wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the founda-
tions of his house. The fog still slept on the wing
above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered
like carbuncles ; and through the muffle and smother
of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town's
life was still rolling on through the great arteries
with a sound as of a mighty wind. But the room
was gay with firelight. In the bottle the acids were
long ago resolved ; the imperial dye had softened
with time, as the colour grows richer in stained
windows ; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons
40
INCIDENT OF THE LETTER
on hillside vineyards was ready to be set free and to
disperse the fogs of London. Insensibly the lawyer
melted. There was no man from whom he kept
fewer secrets than Mr. Guest ; and he was not
always sure that he kept as many as he meant.
Guest had often been on business to the doctor's ;
he knew Poole ; he could scarce have failed to hear
of Mr. Hyde's familiarity about the house ; he might
draw conclusions : was it not as well, then, that he
should see a letter which put that mystery to rights ?
and above all since Guest, being a great student
and critic of handwriting, would consider the step
natural and obliging? The clerk, besides, was a
man of counsel ; he would scarce read so strange
a document without dropping a remark ; and by
that remark Mr. Utterson might shape his future
course.
' This is a sad business about Sir Dan vers,' he
said.
' Yes, sir, indeed. It has elicited a great deal of
public feeling,' returned Guest. 'The man, of
course, was mad.'
* I should like to hear your views on that,' replied
Utterson. ' I have a document here in his hand-
writing ; it is between ourselves, for I scarce know
what to do about it ; it is an ugly business at the
best. But there it is ; quite in your way : a mur-
derer's autograph.'
Guest's eyes brightened, and he sat down at once
and studied it with passion. ' No, sir,' he said ; ' not
mad ; but it is an odd hand.'
41
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
' And by all accounts a very odd writer,' added the
lawyer.
Just then the servant entered with a note.
' Is that from Dr. Jekyll, sir ? ' inquired the clerk.
' I thought I knew the writing. Anything private,
Mr. Utterson ? '
' Only an invitation to dinner. Why ? do you
want to see it ? '
' One moment. I thank you, sir ' ; and the clerk
laid the two sheets of paper alongside and sedulously
compared their contents. ' Thank you, sir,' he said
at last, returning both ; ' it 's a very interesting auto-
graph.'
There was a pause, during which Mr. Utterson
struggled with himself. 'Why did you compare
them, Guest ? ' he inquired suddenly.
' Well, sir,' returned the clerk, ' there 's a rather
singular resemblance ; the two hands are in many
points identical : only differently sloped.'
' Rather quaint,' said Utterson.
' It is, as you say, rather quaint,' returned Guest.
' I wouldn't speak of this note, you know,' said the
master.
' No, sir,' said the clerk. ' I understand.'
But no sooner was Mr. Utterson alone that night
than he locked the note into his safe, where it reposed
from that time forward. ' What ! ' he thought.
' Henry Jekyll forge for a murderer ! ' And his
blood ran cold in his veins.
42
INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON
REMARKABLE INCIDENT OF
DR. LANYON
Time ran on ; thousands of pounds were offered in
reward, for the death of Sir Danvers was resented
as a public injury ; but Mr. Hyde had disappeared
out of the ken of the police as though he had never
existed. Much of his past was unearthed, indeed,
and all disreputable : tales came out of the man's
cruelty, at once so callous and violent, of his vile life,
of his strange associates, of the hatred that seemed
to have surrounded his career ; but of his present
whereabouts, not a whisper. From the time he had
left the house in Soho on the morning of the murder,
he was simply blotted out; and gradually, as time
drew on, Mr. Utterson began to recover from the
hotness of his alarm, and to grow more at quiet with
himself. The death of Sir Danvers was, to his way
of thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance
of Mr. Hyde. Now that that evil influence had
been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll.
He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with
his friends, became once more their familiar guest
and entertainer ; and whilst he had always been
known for charities, he was now no less distinguished
for religion. He was busy, he was much in the
open air, he did good ; his face seemed to open and
brighten, as if with an inward consciousness of ser-
vice ; and for more than two months the doctor was
at peace.
43
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
On the 8th of January Utterson had dined at the
doctor's with a small party ; Lanyon had been there ;
and the face of the host had looked from one to the
other as in the old days when the trio were insepar-
able friends. On the 12th, and again on the 14th,
the door was shut against the lawyer. ' The doctor
was confined to the house,' Poole said, ' and saw no
one.' On the 15th he tried again, and was again
refused ; and having now been used for the last two
months to see his friend almost daily, he found this
return of solitude to weigh upon his spirits. The
fifth night he had in Guest to dine with him ; and
the sixth he betook himself to Dr. Lanyon's.
There at least he was not denied admittance ; but
when he came in, he was shocked at the change
which had taken place in the doctor's appearance.
He had his death-warrant written legibly upon his
face. The rosy man had grown pale ; his flesh had
fallen away ; he was visibly balder and older ; and
yet it was not so much these tokens of a swift
physical decay that arrested the lawyer's notice, as
a look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed
to testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind.
It was unlikely that the doctor should fear death ;
and yet that was what Utterson was tempted to
suspect. ' Yes,' he thought ; ' he is a doctor, he
must know his own state and that his days are
counted ; and the knowledge is more than he can
bear.' And yet when Utterson remarked on his ill-
looks, it was with an air of great firmness that
Lanyon declared himself a doomed man.
44
INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON
' I have had a shock,' he said, ' and I shall never
recover. It is a question of weeks. Well, life h;is
been pleasant ; I liked it ; yes, sir, I used to like it.
I sometimes think if we knew all we should be more
glad to get away.'
' Jekyll is ill too,' observed Utterson. ' Have you
seen him ? '
But Lanyon's face changed, and he held up a
trembling hand. ' I wish to see or hear no more of
Dr. Jekyll,' he said in a loud, unsteady voice. ' I am
quite done with that person ; and I beg that you will
spare me any allusion to one whom I regard as dead.'
' Tut-tut,' said Mr. Utterson ; and then, after a
considerable pause, ' Can't I do anything ? ' he in-
quired. ' We are three very old friends, Lanyon ;
we shall not live to make others.'
' Nothing can be done,' returned Lanyon ; ' ask
himself. '
' He will not see me,' said the lawyer.
' I am not surprised at that,' was the reply.
' Some day, Utterson, after I am dead, you may
perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this.
I cannot tell you. And in the meantime, if you can
sit and talk with me of other things, for God's sake
stay and do so ; but if you cannot keep clear of this
accursed topic, then, in God's name, go, for I cannot
bear it.'
As soon as he got home, Utterson sat down and
wrote to Jekyll, complaining of his exclusion from
the house, and asking the cause of this unhappy
break with Lanyon ; and the next day brought him
45
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
a long answer, often very pathetically worded, and
sometimes darkly mysterious in drift The quarrel
with Lanyon was incurable. ' I do not blame our
old friend,' Jekyll wrote, ' but I share his view that
we must never meet. I mean from henceforth to
lead a life of extreme seclusion ; you must not be
surprised, nor must you doubt my friendship, if my
door is often shut even to you. You must suffer
me to go my own dark way. I have brought on
myself a punishment and a danger that I cannot
name. If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief
of sufferers also. I could not think that this earth
contained a place for sufferings and terrors so un-
manning ; and you can do but one thing, Utterson,
to lighten this destiny, and that is to respect my
silence.' Utterson was amazed ; the dark influence
of Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had re-
turned to his old tasks and amities ; a week ago, the
prospect had smiled with every promise of a cheerful
and an honoured age ; and now in a moment, friend-
ship and peace of mind and the whole tenor of his
life were wrecked. So great and unprepared a
change pointed to madness ; but in view of Lanyon 's
manner and words, there must lie for it some deeper
ground.
A week afterwards Dr. Lanyon took to his bed,
and in something less than a fortnight he was dead.
The night after the funeral, at which he had been
sadly affected, Utterson locked the door of his
business-room, and sitting there by the light of a
melancholy candle, drew out and set before him an
46
INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON
envelope addressed by the hand and sealed with the
seal of his dead friend. * Private : for the hands of
J. G. Utterson alone, and in case of his predecease
to be destroyed unread,' so it was emphatically
superscribed ; and the lawyer dreaded to behold the
contents. ' I have buried one friend to-day,' he
thought : ' what if this should cost me another ? '
And then he condemned the fear as a disloyalty, and
broke the seal. Within there was another enclosure,
likewise sealed, and marked upon the cover as ' not
to be opened till the death or disappearance of Dr.
Henry Jekyll.' Utterson could not trust his eyes.
Yes, it was disappearance ; here again, as in the mad
will which he had long ago restored to its author,
here again were the idea of a disappearance and the
name of Henry Jekyll bracketed. But in the will
that idea had sprung from the sinister suggestion of
the man Hyde ; it was set there with a purpose all
too plain and horrible. Written by the hand of
Lanyon, what should it mean ? A great curiosity
came on the trustee, to disregard the prohibition and
dive at once to the bottom of these mysteries ; but
professional honour and faith to his dead friend were
stringent obligations ; and the packet slept in the
inmost corner of his private safe.
It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to
conquer it ; and it may be doubted if, from that day
forth, Utterson desired the society of his surviving
friend with the same eagerness. He thought of him
kindly ; but his thoughts were disquieted and fearful.
He went to call indeed ; but he was perhaps relieved
47
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
to be denied admittance ; perhaps, in his heart, he
preferred to speak with Poole upon the doorstep and
surrounded by the air and sounds of the open city,
rather than to be admitted into that house of volun-
tary bondage, and to sit and speak with its inscrut-
able recluse. Poole had, indeed, no very pleasant
news to communicate. The doctor, it appeared,
now more than ever confined himself to the cabinet
over the laboratory, where he would sometimes even
sleep ; he was out of spirits, he had grown very
silent, he did not read ; it seemed as if he had some-
thing on his mind. Utterson became so used to the
unvarying character of these reports, that he fell off
little by little in the frequency of his visits.
INCIDENT AT THE WINDOW
It chanced on Sunday, when Mr. Utterson was on
his usual walk with Mr. Enfield, that their way lay
once again through the bystreet ; and that when they
came in front of the door, both stopped to gaze on it
' Well,' said Enfield, ' that story 's at an end at
least. We shall never see more of Mr. Hyde.'
' I hope not,' said Utterson. ' Did I ever tell you
that I once saw him, and shared your feeling of
repulsion ? '
' It was impossible to do the one without the
other,' returned Enfield. ' And by the way, what
an ass you must have thought me, not to know that
48
INCIDENT AT THE WINDOW
this was a back way to Dr. Jekyll's ! It was partly
your own fault that 1 found it out, even when I did.'
' So you found it out, did you ? ' said Utterson.
' But if that be so, we may step into the court and
take a look at the windows. To tell you the truth, I
am^uneasy about poor Jekyll ; and even outside, I feel
as if the presence of a friend might do him good.'
The court was very cool and a little damp, and
full of premature twilight, although the sky, high up
overhead, was still bright with sunset. The middle
one of the three windows was half-way open ; and
sitting close beside it, taking the air with an infinite
sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner,
Utterson saw Dr. Jekyll.
'What! Jekyll!' he cried. ' I trust you are better.'
' I am very low, Utterson,' replied the doctor
drearily, 'very low. It will not last long, thank God. '
' You stay too much indoors,' said the lawyer.
' You should be out, whipping up the circulation
like Mr. Enfield and me. (This is my cousin — Mr.
Enfield — Dr. Jekyll. ) Come now ; get your hat and
take a quick turn with us.'
'You are very good,' sighed the other. 'I should
like to very much ; but no, no, no, it is quite impos-
sible ; I dare not. But indeed, Utterson, I am very
glad to see you ; this is really a great pleasure ; I
would ask you and Mr. Enfield up, but the place is
really not fit.'
'Why then,' said the lawyer good-naturedly, 'the
best thing we can do is to stay down here and speak
with you from where we are.'
8 — d 49
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
'That is just what I was about to venture to pro-
pose,' returned the doctor, with a smile. But the
words were hardly uttered, before the smile was
struck out of his face and succeeded by an expres-
sion of such abject terror and despair as froze the
very blood of the two gentlemen below. They saw
it but for a glimpse, for the window was instantly
thrust down ; but that glimpse had been sufficient,
and they turned and left the court without a word.
In silence, too, they traversed the bystreet ; and it
was not until they had come into a neighbouring
thoroughfare, where even upon a Sunday there were
still some stirrings of life, that Mr. Utterson at last
turned and looked at his companion. They were
both pale ; and there was an answering horror in
their eyes.
' God forgive us, God forgive us! ' said Mr. Utterson.
But Mr. Enfield only nodded his head very
seriously, and walked on once more in silence.
THE LAST NIGHT
Mr. Utterson was sitting by his fireside one even-
ing after dinner, when he was surprised to receive a
visit from Poole.
' Bless me, Poole, what brings you here ? ' he
cried ; and then, taking a second look at him, ' What
ails you ? ' he added, ' is the doctor ill ? '
50
THE LAST NIGHT
' Mr. Utterson,' said the man, ' there is something
wrong.
' Take a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you,'
said the lawyer. ' Now, take your time, and tell me
plainly what you want.'
' You know the doctor's ways, sir,' replied Poole,
' and how he shuts himself up. Well, he 's shut
up again in the cabinet ; and I don't like it, sir — I
wish I may die if I like it. Mr. Utterson, sir, I 'm
afraid.'
' Now, my good man,' said the lawyer, ' be explicit.
What are you afraid of ? '
' I 've been afraid for about a week,' returned
Poole, doggedly disregarding the question, ' and I
can bear it no more.'
The man's appearance amply bore out his words ;
his manner was altered for the worse ; and except for
the moment when he had first announced his terror,
he had not once looked the lawyer in the face. Even
now, he sat with the glass of wine untasted on his
knee, and his eyes directed to a corner of the floor.
' I can bear it no more,' he repeated.
' Come,' said the lawyer, ' I see you have some
good reason, Poole; I see there is something seriously
amiss. Try to tell me what it is.'
' I think there 's been foul play,' said Poole
hoarsely.
1 Foul play ! ' cried the lawyer, a good deal
frightened, and rather inclined to be irritated in con-
sequence. * What foul play ? What does the man
mean ? '
5i
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
' I daren't say, sir,' was the answer ; ' but will you
come along with me and see for yourself? '
Mr. Utterson's only answer was to rise and get his
hat and greatcoat ; but he observed with wonder
the greatness of the relief that appeared upon the
butler's face, and perhaps with no less, that the wine
was still untasted when he set it down to follow.
It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March,
with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the
wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most
diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made
talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face.
It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare
of passengers, besides ; for Mr. Utterson thought he
had never seen that part of London so deserted.
He could have wished it otherwise ; never in his life
had he been conscious of so sharp a wish to see and
touch his fellow-creatures ; for, struggle as he might,
there was borne in upon his mind a crushing antici-
pation of calamity. The square, when they got
there, was all full of wind and dust, and the thin
trees in the garden were lashing themselves along
the railing. Poole, who had kept all the way a pace
or two ahead, now pulled up in the middle of the
pavement, and, in spite of the biting weather, took
off his hat and mopped his brow with a red pocket-
handkerchief. But for all the hurry of his coming,
these were not the dews of exertion that he wiped
away, but the moisture of some strangling anguish ;
for his face was white, and his voice, when he spoke,
harsh and broken.
52
THE LAST NIGHT
' Well, sir,' he said, ' here we are, and God grant
there be nothing wrong.'
' Amen, Poole,' said the lawyer.
Thereupon the servant knocked in a very guarded
manner ; the door was opened on the chain ; and a
voice asked from within, ' Is that you, Poole ? '
' It's all right,' said Poole. ' Open the door.'
The hall, when they entered it, was brightly
lighted up ; the fire was built high ; and about the
hearth the whole of the servants, men and women,
stood huddled together like a flock of sheep. At
the sight of Mr. Utterson the housemaid broke into
hysterical whimpering ; and the cook, crying out
' Bless God ! it 's Mr. Utterson,' ran forward as if to
take him in her arms.
' What, what ? Are you all here ? ' said the lawyer
peevishly. ' Very irregular, very unseemly ; your
master would be far from pleased.'
' They 're all afraid,' said Poole.
Blank silence followed, no one protesting ; only
the maid lifted up her voice and now wept loudly.
' Hold your tongue ! ' Poole said to her, with a
ferocity of accent that testified to his own jangled
nerves ; and indeed, when the girl had so suddenly
raised the note of her lamentation, they had all
started and turned towards the inner door with faces
of dreadful expectation. ' And now,' continued the
butler, addressing the knife-boy, ' reach me a candle,
and we'll get this through hands at once.' And
then he begged Mr. Utterson to follow him, and led
the way to the back-garden.
53
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
'Now sir,' said he, 'you come as gently as you
can. I want you to hear, and I don't want you to
be heard. And see here, sir, if by any chance he
was to ask you in, don't go.'
Mr. Utterson's nerves, at this unlooked-for ter-
mination, gave a jerk that nearly threw him from his
balance ; but he re-collected his courage and followed
the butler into the laboratory building and through
the surgical theatre, with its lumber of crates and
bottles, to the foot of the stair. Here Poole motioned
him to stand on one side and listen ; while he him-
self, setting down the candle and making a great
and obvious call on his resolution, mounted the steps
and knocked with a somewhat uncertain hand on
the red baize of the cabinet door.
' Mr. Utterson, sir, asking to see you,' he called ;
and, even as he did so, once more violently signed to
the lawyer to give ear.
A voice answered from within : ' Tell him I cannot
see any one,' it said complainingly.
' Thank you, sir,' said Poole, with a note of some-
thing like triumph in his voice ; and taking up his
candle, lie led Mr. Utterson back across the yard and
into the great kitchen, where the fire was out and
the beetles were leaping on the floor.
' Sir,' he said, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes,
' was that my master's voice ? '
' It seems much changed,' replied the lawyer, very
pale, but giving look for look.
' Changed ? Well, yes, I think so,' said the butler.
' Have I been twenty years in this man's house, to
54
THE LAST NIGHT
be deceived about his voice ? No, sir ; master 's made
away with ; he was made away with eight days ago,
when we heard him cry out upon the name of God ;
and who 's in there instead of him, and why it stays
there, is a thing that cries to Heaven, Mr. Utterson ! '
' This is a very strange tale, Poole ; this is rather
a wild tale, my man,' said Mr. Utterson, biting his
finger. ' Suppose it were as you suppose, suppos-
ing Dr. .Tekyll to have been — well, murdered, what
could induce the murderer to stay ? That won't
hold water ; it doesn't commend itself to reason.'
'Well, Mr. Utterson, you are a hard man to
satisfy, but I '11 do it yet,' said Poole. ' All this last
week (you must know) him, or it, or whatever it is
that lives in that cabinet, has been crying night and
day for some sort of medicine and cannot get it to
his mind. It was sometimes his way — the master's,
that is— to write his orders on a sheet of paper and
throw it on the stair. We 've had nothing else this
week back ; nothing but papers, and a closed door,
and the very meals left there to be smuggled in
when nobody was looking. Well, sir, every day,
ay, and twice and thrice in the same day, there have
been orders and complaints, and I have been sent
flying to all the wholesale chemists in town. Every
time I brought the stuff back, there would be another
paper telling me to return it, because it was not
pure, and another order to a different firm. This
drug is wanted bitter bad, sir, whatever for.'
* Have you any of these papers ? ' asked Mr.
Utterson.
55
DR. JEKYLL AND MR HYDE
Poole felt in his pocket and handed out a crumpled
note, which the lawyer, bending nearer to the candle,
carefully examined. Its contents ran thus : ' Dr.
Jekyll presents his compliments to Messrs. Maw.
He assures them that their last sample is impure,
and quite useless for his present purpose. In the
year 18 — , Dr. J. purchased a somewhat large
quantity from Messrs. M. He now begs them to
search with the most sedulous care, and should any
of the same quality be left, to forward it to him at
once. Expense is no consideration. The importance
of this to Dr. J. can hardly be exaggerated.' So far
the letter had run composedly enough, but here,
with a sudden splutter of the pen, the writer's
emotion had broken loose. ' For God's sake,' he had
added, 'find me some of the old.'
' This is a strange note,' said Mr. Utterson ; and
then sharply, ' how do you come to have it open ? '
' The man at Maw's was main angry, sir, and he
threw it back to me like so much dirt,' returned
Poole.
' This is unquestionably the doctor's hand, do you
know ? ' resumed the lawyer.
' I thought it looked like it,' said the servant rather
sulkily ; and then, with another voice, ' But what
matters hand-of- write,' he said. ' I 've seen him ! '
' Seen him ? ' repeated Mr. Utterson. ' Well ? '
' That 's it ! ' said Poole. ' It was this way. I
came suddenly into the theatre from the garden. It
seems he had slipped out to look for this drug, or
whatever it is ; for the cabinet door was open, and
56
THE LAS! NIGHT
there he was at the far end of the room digging
among the crates. He looked up when I came in,
gave a kind of cry, and whipped upstairs into the
cabinet It was but for one minute that I saw him,
but the hair stood up on my head like quills. Sir, if
that was my master, why had he a mask upon his
face ? If it was my master, why did he cry out like
a rat, and run from me ? I have served him long
enough. And then . . .' the man paused and passed
his hand over his face.
'These are all very strange circumstances,' said
Mr. Utterson, 'but I think I begin to see daylight.
Your master, Poole, is plainly seized with one of
those maladies that both torture and deform the
sufferer ; hence, for aught I know, the alteration of
his voice ; hence the mask and his avoidance of his
friends ; hence his eagerness to find this drug, by
means of which the poor soul retains some hope
of ultimate recovery — God grant that he be not
deceived ! There is my explanation ; it is sad
enough, Poole, ay, and appalling to consider ; but it
is plain and natural, hangs well together, and delivers
us from all exorbitant alarms.'
' Sir,' said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled
pallor, ' that thing was not my master, and there 's
the truth. My master ' — here he looked round him
and began to whisper — 'is a tall fine build of a man,
and this was more of a dwarf.' Utterson attempted
to protest. ' O sir,' cried Poole, ' do you think I do
not know my master after twenty years ? do you
think I do not know where his head comes to in the
57
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
cabinet door, where I saw him every morning of my
life ? No, sir, that thing in the mask was never
Dr. Jekyll — God knows what it was, but it was
never Dr. Jekyll ; and it is the belief of my heart
that there was murder done.'
'Poole,' replied the lawyer, 'if you say that, it
will become my duty to make certain. Much as I
desire to spare your master's feelings, much as I am
puzzled by this note which seems to prove him to be
still alive, I shall consider it my duty to break in
that door.'
' Ah, Mr. Utterson, that 's talking ! ' cried the
butler.
'And now comes the second question,' resumed
Utterson : ' Who is going to do it ? '
' Why, you and me, sir,' was the undaunted reply.
' That is very well said,' returned the lawyer ; ' and
whatever comes of it, I shall make it my business to
see you are no loser.'
' There is an axe in the theatre,' continued Poole ;
' and you might take the kitchen poker for yourself.'
The lawyer took that rude but weighty instrument
into his hand, and balanced it. 'Do you know,
Poole,' he said, looking up, ' that you and I are
about to place ourselves in a position of some peril ? '
' You may say so, sir, indeed,' returned the butler.
' It is well, then, that we should be frank,' said
the other. ' We both think more than we have said ;
let us make a clean breast. This masked figure that
you saw, did you recognise it ? '
' Well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was
58
THE LAST NIGHT
so doubled up, that I could hardly swear to that,'
was the answer. ' But if you mean, was it Mr.
Hyde ? — why, yes, I think it was ! You see, it was
much of the same bigness ; and it had the same
quick light way with it ; and then who else could
have got in by the laboratory door ? You have not
forgot, sir, that at the time of the murder he had
still the key with him ? But that 's not all. I don't
know, Mr. Utterson, if ever you met this Mr. Hyde ? '
'Yes,' said the lawyer, 'I once spoke with him.'
• Then you must know as well as the rest of us
that there was something queer about that gentleman
— something that gave a man a turn — I don't know
rightly how to say it, sir, beyond this : that you felt
it in your marrow kind of cold and thin.'
• I own I felt something of what you describe,'
said Mr. Utterson.
' Quite so, sir,' returned Poole. ' Well, when that
masked thing like a monkey jumped from among the
chemicals and whipped into the cabinet, it went
down my spine like ice. Oh, I know it 's not evidence,
Mr. Utterson ; I 'm book-learned enough for that ;
but a man has his feelings, and I give you my Bible-
word it was Mr. Hyde ! '
' Ay, ay,' said the lawyer. ' My fears incline to
the same point. Evil, I fear, founded — evil was sure
to come — of that connection. Ay, truly, I believe
you ; I believe poor Harry is killed ; and I believe
his murderer (for what purpose, God alone can tell)
is still lurking in his victim's room. Well, let our
name be vengeance. Call Bradshaw.'
59
DR JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
The footman came at the summons, very white
and nervous.
1 Pull yourself together, Bradshaw,' said the lawyer.
' This suspense, I know, is telling upon all of you ;
but it is now our intention to make an end of it.
Poole, here, and I are going to force our way into
the cabinet. If all is well, my shoulders are broad
enough to bear the blame. Meanwhile, lest anything
should really be amiss, or any malefactor seek to
escape by the back, you and the boy must go round
the corner with a pair of good sticks, and take your
post at the laboratory door. We give you ten
minutes to get to your stations.'
As Bradshaw left, the lawyer looked at his watch.
' And now, Poole, let us get to ours,' he said ; and
taking the poker under his arm, he led the way into
the yard. The scud had banked over the moon, and
it was now quite dark. The wind, which only broke
in puffs and draughts into that deep well of building,
tossed the light of the candle to and fro about their
steps, until they came into the shelter of the theatre,
where they sat down silently to wait. London
hummed solemnly all around ; but nearer at hand,
the stillness was only broken by the sound of a
footfall moving: to and fro along the cabinet floor.
' So it will walk all day, sir,' whispered Poole ;
1 ay, and the better part of the night. Only when a
new sample comes from the chemist, there 's a bit of
a break. Ah, it 's an ill conscience that s such an
enemy to rest ! Ah, sir, there 's blood foully shed
in every step of it ! But hark again, a little closer
6o
THE LAST NIGHT
— put your heart in your ears, Mr. Utterson, and
tell me, is that the doctor's foot ? '
The steps fell lightly and oddly, with a certain
swing, for all they went so slowly ; it was different
indeed from the heavy creaking tread of Henry
Jekyll. Utterson sighed. ' Is there never anything
else ? ' he asked.
Poole nodded. ' Once,' he said. ' Once I heard
it weeping ! '
' Weeping ? how that ? ' said the lawyer, conscious
of a sudden chill of horror.
' Weeping like a woman or a lost soul,' said the
butler. ' I came away with that upon my heart
that I could have wept too.'
But now the ten minutes drew to an end. Poole
disinterred the axe from under a stack of packing
straw ; the candle was set upon the nearest table to
light them to the attack ; and they drew near with
bated breath to where that patient foot was still
going up and down, up and down, in the quiet of
the night.
'Jekyll,' cried Utterson, with a loud voice, 'I
demand to see you.' He paused a moment, but
there came no reply. ' I give you fair warning, our
suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see
you,' he resumed ; ' if not by fair means, then by
foul — if not of your consent, then by brute force ! '
' Utterson,' said the voice, ' for God's sake have
mercy ! '
' Ah, that 's not Jekyll's voice — it 's Hyde's ! ' cried
Utterson. ' Down with the door, Poole. '
61
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
t
Poole swung the axe over his shoulder ; the blow
shook the building, and the red baize door leaped
against the lock and hinges. A dismal screech, as of
mere animal terror, rang from the cabinet. Up
went the axe again, and again the panels crashed
and the frame bounded ; four times the blow fell ;
but the wood was tough and the fittings were of
excellent workmanship ; and it was not until the
fifth, that the lock burst in sunder and the wreck of
the door fell inwards on the carpet.
The besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the
stillness that had succeeded, stood back a little and
peered in. There lay the cabinet before their eyes
in the quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing and
chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin
strain, a drawer or two open, papers neatly set forth
on the business-table, and, nearer the fire, the, things
laid out for tea : the quietest room, you would have
said, and, but for the glazed presses full of chemicals,
the most commonplace that night in London.
Right in the midst there lay the body of a man
sorely contorted, and still twitching. They drew
near on tiptoe, turned it on its back, and beheld the
face of Edward Hyde. He was dressed in clothes
far too large for him, clothes of the doctor's bigness ;
the cords of his face still moved with a semblance of
life, but life was quite gone ; and by the crushed
phial in the hand and the strong smell of kernels
that hung upon the air, Utterson knew that he was
looking on the body of a self-destroyer.
1 We have come too late,' he said sternly,
62
THE LAST NIGHT
' whether to save or punish. Hyde is gone to his
account ; and it only remains for us to find the body
of your master.'
The far greater proportion of the building was
occupied by the theatre, which filled almost the
whole ground story and was lighted from above, and
by the cabinet, which formed an upper story at one
end and looked upon the court. A corridor joined
the theatre to the door on the bystreet, and with
this, the cabinet communicated separately by a
second flight of stairs. There were besides a few
dark closets and a spacious cellar. All these they
now thoroughly examined. Each closet needed
but a glance, for all were empty, and all, by the
dust that fell from their doors, had stood long
unopened. The cellar, indeed, was filled with crazy
lumber, mostly dating from the times of the surgeon
who was Jekyll's predecessor; but even as they
opened the door, they were advertised of the useless-
ness of further search, by the fall of a perfect mat of
cobweb which had for years sealed up the entrance.
Nowhere was there any trace of Henry Jekyll, dead
or alive.
Poole stamped on the flags of the corridor. ' He
must be buried here,' he said, hearkening to the
sound.
' Or he may have fled,' said Utterson ; and he
turned to examine the door in the bystreet. It was
locked ; and lying near by on the flags, they found
the key, already stained with rust.
' This does not look like use,' observed the lawyer.
63
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
' Use ! ' echoed Poole. ' Do you not see, sir, it is
broken ? much as if a man had stamped on it. '
'Ay,' continued Utterson, 'and the fractures, too,
are rusty.' The two men looked at each other with
a scare. ' This is beyond me, Poole,' said the
lawyer. ' Let us go back to the cabinet.'
They mounted the stair in silence, and, still with
an occasional awe-struck glance at the dead body,
proceeded more thoroughly to examine the contents
of the cabinet. At one table there were traces of
chemical work, various measured heaps of some
white salt being laid on glass saucers, as though for
an experiment in which the unhappy man had been
prevented.
' That is the same drug that I was always bring-
ing him,' said Poole ; and even as he spoke, the
kettle with a startling noise boiled over.
This brought them to the fireside, where the easy-
chair was drawn cosily up, and the tea-things stood
ready to the sitter's elbow, the very sugar in the
cup. There were several books on a shelf; one lay
beside the tea-things open, and Utterson was amazed
to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll
had several times expressed a great esteem, annot-
ated, in his own hand, with startling blasphemies.
Next, in the course of their review of the chamber,
the searchers came to the cheval glass, into whose
depths they looked with an involuntary horror.
But it was so turned as to show them nothing but
the rosy glow playing on the roof, the fire sparkling
in a hundred repetitions along the glazed front of
64
THE LAST NIGHT
the presses, and their own pale and fearful counten-
ances stooping to look in.
' This glass have seen some strange things, sir,"
whispered Poole.
'And surely none stranger than itself,' echoed the
lawyer in the same tones. ' For what did Jekyll ' —
he caught himself up at the word with a start, and
then conquering the weakness : ' what could Jekyll
want with it ? ' he said.
' You may say that ! ' said Poole.
Next they turned to the business-table. On the
desk among the neat array of papers, a large en-
velope was uppermost, and bore, in the doctor's
hand, the name of Mr. Utterson. The lawyer
unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor.
The first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric
terms as the one which he had returned six months
before, to serve as a testament in case of death and
as a deed of gift in case of disappearance; but, in
place of the name of Edward Hyde, the lawyer,
with indescribable amazement, read the name of
Gabriel John Utterson. He looked at Poole, and
then back at the paper, and last of all at the dead
malefactor stretched upon the carpet.
' My head goes round,' he said. ' He has been all
these days in possession ; he had no cause to like
me ; he must have raged to see himself displaced ;
and he has not destroyed this document.'
He caught up the next paper ; it was a brief
note in the doctor's hand, and dated at the top.
' O Poole ! ' the lawyer cried, ' he was alive and here
8-e 65
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
this day. He cannot have been disposed of in so
short a space, he must be still alive, he must have
fled ! And then, why fled ? and how ? and in that
case, can we venture to declare this suicide ? Oh, we
must be careful. I foresee that we may yet involve
your master in some dire catastrophe.'
' Why don't you read it, sir ? ' asked Poole.
' Because I fear, ' replied the lawyer solemnly. ' God
grant I* have no cause for it!' And with that he
brought the paper to his eyes and read as follows :
' My dear Utterson, — When this shall fall into
your hands, I shall have disappeared, under what
circumstances I have not the penetration to foresee,
but my instinct and all the circumstances of my
nameless situation tell me that the end is sure, and
must be early. Go then, and first read the narrative
which Lanyon warned me he was to place in your
hands ; and if you care to hear more, turn to the
confession of
' Your unworthy and unhappy friend,
' Henry Jekyll.'
' There was a third enclosure ? ' asked Utterson.
' Here, sir,' said Poole, and gave into his hands a
considerable packet sealed in several places.
The lawyer put it in his pocket. ' I would say
nothing of this paper. If your master has fled or is
dead, we may at least save his credit. It is now
ten ; I must go home and read these documents in
quiet ; but I shall be back before midnight, when we
shall send for the police.'
66
THE LAST NIGHT
They went out, locking the door of the theatre
behind them ; and Utterson, once more leaving the
servants gathered about the fire in the hall, trudged
back to his office to read the two narratives in which
this mystery was now to be explained.
DR. LANYON'S NARRATIVE
On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I
received by the evening delivery a registered en-
velope, addressed in the hand of my colleague and
old school-companion, Henry Jekyll. I was a good
deal surprised by this ; for we were by no means in
the habit of correspondence ; I had seen the man,
dined with him, indeed, the night before ; and I
could imagine nothing in our intercourse that
should justify the formality of registration. The
contents increased my wonder ; for this is how the
letter ran : —
' 10th December 18—
' Dear Lanyon, — You are one of my oldest
friends ; and although we may have differed at times
on scientific questions, I cannot remember, at least
on my side, any break in our affection. There was
never a day when, if you had said to me, " Jekyll,
my life, my honour, my reason, depend upon you,"
I would not have sacrificed my fortune or my left
hand to help you. Lanyon, my life, my honour, my
reason, are all at your mercy ; if you fail me to-
6 7
DR. JEKYLL AND MR HYDE
night, I am lost. You might suppose, after this
preface, that I am going to ask you for something
dishonourable to grant. Judge for yourself.
' I want you to postpone all other engagements
for to-night — ay, even if you were summoned to the
bedside of an emperor ; to take a cab, unless your
carriage should be actually at the door; and with
this letter in your hand for consultation, to drive
straight to my house. Poole, my butler, has his
orders ; you will find him waiting your arrival with
a locksmith. The door of my cabinet is then to be
forced ; and you are to go in alone ; to open the
glazed press (letter E) on the left hand, breaking the
lock if it be shut ; and to draw out, with all its con-
tents as they stand, the fourth drawer from the top
or (which is the same thing) the third from the
bottom. In my extreme distress of mind I have a
morbid fear of misdirecting you ; but even if I am
in error, you may know the right drawer by its con-
tents : some powders, a phial, and a paper book.
This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you to
Cavendish Square exactly as it stands.
' That is the first part of the service : now for the
second. You should be back, if you set out at once
on the receipt of this, long before midnight ; but I
will leave you that amount of margin, not only in
the fear of one of those obstacles that can neither
be prevented nor foreseen, but because an hour
when your servants are in bed is to be preferred for
what will then remain to do. At midnight, then, I
have to ask you to be alone in your consulting-
68
DR. LANYON'S NARRATIVE
room, to admit with your own hand into the house
a man who will present himself in my name, and to
place in his hands the drawer that you will have
brought with you from my cabinet. Then you will
have played your part and earned my gratitude
completely. Five minutes, afterwards, if you insist
upon an explanation, you will have understood that
these arrangements are of capital importance ; and that
by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as they must
appear, you might have charged your conscience with
my death or the shipwreck of my reason.
' Confident as I am that you will not trifle with
this appeal, my heart sinks and my hand trembles at
the bare thought of such a possibility. Think of me
at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a
blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate,
and yet well aware that, if you will but punctually
serve me, my troubles will roll away like a story
that is told. Serve me, my dear Lanyon, and save
' Your friend,
< H. J.
' P.S. — I had already sealed this up when a fresh
terror struck upon my soul. It is possible that the
post office may fail me, and this letter not come into
your hands until to-morrow morning. In that case,
dear Lanyon, do my errand when it shall be most
convenient for you in the course of the day; and
once more expect my messenger at midnight. It
may then already be too late ; and if that night
passes without event, you will know that you have
seen the last of Henry Jekyll.'
69
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
Upon the reading of this letter I made sure my
colleague was insane ; but till that was proved
beyond the possibility of doubt, I felt bound to do
as he requested. The less I understood of this
farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its
importance ; and an appeal so worded could not be
set aside without a grave responsibility. I rose
accordingly from table, got into a hansom, and
drove straight to Jekyll's house. The butler was
awaiting my arrival ; he had received by the same
post as mine a registered letter of instruction, and
had sent at once for a locksmith and a carpenter.
The tradesmen came while we were yet speaking ;
and we moved in a body to old Dr. Denman's
surgical theatre, from which (as you are doubtless
aware) Jekyll's private cabinet is most conveniently
entered. The door was very strong, the lock ex-
cellent ; the carpenter avowed he would have great
trouble and have to do much damage, if force were
to ,be used ; and the locksmith was near despair.
But this last was a handy fellow, and after two
hours' work the door stood open. The press marked
E was unlocked ; and I took out the drawer, had it
filled up with straw and tied in a sheet, and re-
turned with it to Cavendish Square.
Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The
powders were neatly enough made up, but not with
the nicety of the dispensing chemist ; so that it was
plain they were of Jekyll's private manufacture ; and
when I opened one of the wrappers, I found what
seemed to me a simple, crystalline salt of a white
70
DR. LANYON'S NARRATIVE
colour. The phial, to which I next turned my
attention, might have been about half-full of a
blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to the
sense of smell and seemed to me to contain phos-
phorus and some volatile ether. At the other
ingredients I could make no guess. The book was
an ordinary version-book, and contained little but a
series of dates. These covered a period of many
years, but I observed that the entries ceased nearly
a year ago, and quite abruptly. Here and there a
brief remark was appended to a date, usually no
more than a single word : ' double ' occurring perhaps
six times in a total of several hundred entries ; and
once very early in the list, and followed by several
marks of exclamation, ' total failure ! ! ! ' All this,
though it whetted my curiosity, told me little that
was definite. Here was a phial of some tincture, a
paper of some salt, and a record of a series of experi-
ments that had led (like too many of Jekyll's
investigations) to no end of practical usefulness.
How could the presence of these articles in my
house affect either the honour, the sanity, or the life
of my flighty colleague ? If his messenger could go
to one place, why could he not go to another ? And
even granting some impediment, why was this
gentleman to be received by me in secret ? The
more I reflected, the more convinced I grew that I
was dealing with a case of cerebral disease ; and
though I dismissed my servants to bed, I loaded an
old revolver that I might be found in some posture
of self-defence.
7i
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
Twelve o'clock had scarce rung out over London,
ere the knocker sounded very gently on the door. I
went myself at the summons, and found a small man
crouching against the pillars of the portico.
' Are you come from Dr. Jekyll ? ' I asked.
He told me ' yes ' by a constrained gesture ; and
when I had bidden him enter, he did not obey me
without a searching backward glance into the dark-
ness of the square. There was a policeman not far
off, advancing with his bull's-eye open ; and at the
sight I thought my visitor started and made greater
haste.
These particulars struck me, I confess, disagree-
ably ; and as I followed him into the bright light of
the consulting-room I kept my hand ready on my
weapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly
seeing him. I had never set eyes on him before, so
much was certain. He was small, as I have said ;
I was struck besides with the shocking expression
of his face, with his remarkable combination of great
muscular activity and great apparent debility of con-
stitution, and — last but not least — with the odd,
subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood.
This bore some resemblance to incipient rigor, and
was accompanied by a marked sinking of the pulse.
At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic,
personal distaste, and merely wondered at the acute-
ness of the symptoms ; but I have since had reason
to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature
of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the
principle of hatred.
72
DR. LANYON'S NARRATIVE
Tliis person (who had thus from the first moment
of his entrance, struck in me what I can only describe
as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed in a fashion
that would have made an ordinary person laughable :
his clothes, that is to say, although they were of
rich and sober fabric, were enormously too large for
him in every measurement — the trousers hanging on
his legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground,
the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the
collar sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange
to relate, this ludicrous accoutrement was far from
moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was some-
thing abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence
of the creature that now faced me — something seizing,
surprising, and revolting— this fresh disparity seemed
but to fit in with and to reinforce it ; so that to my
interest in the man's nature and character there was
added a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune
and status in the world.
These observations, though they have taken so
great a space to be set down in, were yet the work
of a few seconds. My visitor was, indeed, on fire
with sombre excitement.
' Have you got it ? ' he cried. ' Have you got
it ? ' And so lively was his impatience that he even
laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake me.
I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain
icy pang along my blood. ' Come, sir/ said I. 'You
forget that I have not yet the pleasure of your
acquaintance. Be seated, if you please.' And I
showed him an example, and sat down myself in
DR. JEKYLL AND Mil. HYDE
my customary seat and with as fair an imitation
of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness
of the hour, the nature of my pre-occupations, and
the horror I had of my visitor, would suffer me to
muster.
' I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon,' he replied civilly
enough. ' What you say is very well founded ; and
my impatience has shown its heels to my politeness.
I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr.
Henry Jekyll, on a piece of business of some
moment ; and I understood . . .'he paused and
put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite
of his collected manner, that he was wrestling against
the approaches of the hysteria — ' I understood, a
drawer . . .'
But here I took pity on my visitor's suspense, and
some perhaps on my own growing curiosity.
' There it is, sir,' said I, pointing to the drawer,
where it lay on the floor behind a table and still
covered with the sheet.
He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his
hand upon his heart ; I could hear his teeth grate
with the convulsive action of his jaws ; and his face
was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for
his life and reason.
' Compose yourself,' said I.
He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with
the decision of despair, plucked away the sheet. At
sight of the contents he uttered one loud sob of
such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the
next moment, in a voice that was already fairly well
74
DR. LANYON'S NARRATIVE
under control, ' Have you a graduated glass ? ' he
asked.
I rose from my place with something of an effort
and gave him what he asked.
He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out
a few minims of the red tincture and added one of
the powders. The mixture, which was at first of a
reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals
melted, to brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly,
and to throw off small fumes of vapour. Suddenly
and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and
the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded
again more slowly to a watery green. My visitor, who
had watched these metamorphoses with a keen eye,
smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then
turned and looked upon me with an air of scrutiny.
'And now,' said he, 'to settle what remains. Will
you be wise ? will you be guided ? will you suffer
me to take this glass in my hand and to go forth
from your house without further parley ? or has the
greed of curiosity too much command of you ? Think
before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide.
As you decide, you shall be left as you were before,
and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of
service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be
counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you
shall so prefer to choose, a new province of know-
ledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be
laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the in-
stant ; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy
to stagger the unbelief of Satan.'
75
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
' Sir,' said I, affecting a coolness that I was far
from truly possessing, ' you speak enigmas, and you
will perhaps not wonder that I hear you with no
very strong impression of belief. But I have gone
too far in the way of inexplicable services to pause
before I see the end.'
' It is well,' replied my visitor. ' Lanyon, you
remember your vows : what follows is under the seal
of our profession. And now, you who have so long
been bound to the most narrow and material views,
you who have denied the virtue of transcendental
medicine, you Avho have derided your superiors —
behold ! '
He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp.
A cry followed ; he reeled, staggered, clutched at
the table and held on, staring with injected eyes,
gasping with open mouth ; and as I looked there
came, I thought, a change — he seemed to swell — his
face became suddenly black and the features seemed
to melt and alter — and the next moment, I had
sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall,
my arm raised to shield me from that prodigy, my
mind submerged in terror.
' O God ! ' I screamed, and ' O God ! ' again and
again ; for there before my eyes — pale and shaken
and half-fainting, and groping before him with his
hands, like a man restored from death — there stood
Henry Jekyll !
What he told me in the next hour I cannot bring
my mind to set on paper. I saw what I saw, I
heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it ;
76
DR. LANYON'S NARRATIVE
and yet now when that sight has faded from my
eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot
answer. My life is shaken to its roots ; sleep has
left me ; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours
of the day and night ; I feel that my days are
numbered, and that I must die ; and yet I shall
die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that
man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I
cannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start
of horror. I will say but one thing, Utterson, and
that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be
more than enough. The creature who crept into my
house that night was, on .Tekyll's own confession,
known by the name of Hyde, and hunted for in
every corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.
Hastie Lanyon.
HENRY JEKYLLS FULL STATEMENT
OF THE CASE
I was born in the year 18 — to a large fortune, en-
dowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature
to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good
among my felloAv-men, and thus, as might have been
supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and
distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my
faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition,
such as has made the happiness of many, but such as
I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire
to carry my head high, and wear a more than com-
77
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
monly grave countenance before the public. Hence
it came about that I concealed my pleasures ; and
that when I reached years of reflection, and began
to look round me and take stock of my progress and
position in the world. I stood already committed to
a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would
have even blazoned such irregularities as I was
guilty of; but from the high views that I had set
before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost
morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the
exacting nature of my aspirations than any parti-
cular degradation in mv faults, that made me what
I was and, with even a deeper trench than in the
majority of men, severed in me those provinces of
good and ill which divide and compound man's dual
nature. In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply
and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies
at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful
springs of distress. Though so profound a double-
dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite : both sides of
me were in dead earnest : I was no more myself
when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame,
than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the
furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and
suffering. And it chanced that the direction of mv
scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic
and the transcendental, reacted and shed a strong
light on this consciousness of the perennial war
among mv members. With everv day, and from
both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the in-
tellectual. I thus drew steadilv nearer to that truth,
78
JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT
by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to
such a dreadful shipwreck : that man is not truly
one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of
my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point.
Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the
same lines ; and I hazard the guess that man will
be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious,
incongruous, and independent denizens. I for my
part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly
in one direction, and in one direction only. It was
on the moral side, and in my own person, that I
learned to recognise the thorough and primitive
duality of man ; I saw that of the two natures that
contended in the field of my consciousness, even if
I could rightly be said to be either, it was only
because I was radically both ; and from an early
date, even before the course of my scientific dis-
coveries had begun to suggest the most naked pos-
sibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell
with pleasure, as a beloved day-dream, on the thought
of the separation of these elements. If each, I told
myself, could but be housed in separate identities,
life would be relieved of all that was unbearable ; the
unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspira-
tions and remorse of his more upright twin ; and the
just could walk steadfastly and securely on his up-
ward path, doing the good things in which he found
his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and
penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil. It
was the curse of mankind that these incongruous
fagots were thus bound together — that in the
79
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
agonised womb of consciousness these polar twins
should be continuously struggling. How, then,
were they dissociated ?
I was so far in my reflections when, as I have
said, a side-light began to shine upon the subject
from the laboratory table. I began to perceive more
deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling
immateriality, the mist-like transience, of this seem-
ingly so solid body in which we walk attired. Certain
agents I found to have the power to shake and to
pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind
might toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two good
reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific
branch of my confession. First, because I have been
made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life
is bound for ever on man's shoulders, and when the
attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon
us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.
Second, because as my narrative will make, alas ! too
evident, my discoveries were incomplete. Enough,
then, that I not only recognised my natural body for
the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers
that made up my spirit, but managed to compound
a drug by which these powers should be dethroned
from their supremacy, and a second form and coun-
tenance substituted, none the less natural to me
because they were the expression, and bore the stamp,
of lower elements in my soul.
I hesitated long before I put this theory to the
test of practice. I knew well that I risked death ;
for any drug that so potently controlled and shook
80
JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT
the very fortress of identity, might by the least
scruple of an overdose or at the least inopportunity
in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that
immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change.
But the temptation of a discovery so singular and
profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm.
I had long since prepared my tincture ; I purchased
at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a large
quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my
experiments, to be the last ingredient required ; and
late one accursed night, I compounded the elements,
watched them boil and smoke together in the glass,
and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong
glow of courage drank off the potion.
The most racking pangs succeeded ; a grinding in
the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit
that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or
death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside,
and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness.
There was something strange in my sensations, some-
thing indescribably new and, from its very novelty,
incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in
body ; within I was conscious of a heady reckless-
ness, a current of disordered sensual images running
like a mill-race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds
of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent
freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first
breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold
more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil ; and
the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted
me like wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting
8— f 8 1
£3£5S
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
in the freshness of these sensations ; and in the act
I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature.
There was no mirror, at that date, in my room ;
that which stands beside me as I write was brought
there later on, and for the very purpose of these
transformations. The night, however, was far gone
into the morning— the morning, black as it was, was
nearly ripe for the conception of the day — the in-
mates of my house were locked in the most rigorous
hours of slumber ; and I determined, flushed as I
was with hope and triumph, to venture in my new
shape as far as to my bedroom. I crossed the yard,
wherein the constellations looked down upon me, I
could have thought, with wonder, the first creature
of that sort that their unsleeping vigilance had yet
disclosed to them ; I stole through the corridors,
a stranger in my own house ; and, coming to my
room, I saw for the first time the appearance of
Edward Hyde.
I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that
which I know, but that which I suppose to be most
probable. The evil side of my nature, to which I
had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less
robust and less developed than the good which I had
just deposed. Again, in the course of my life, which
had been, after all, nine-tenths a life of effort, virtue,
and control, it had been much less exercised and
much less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it
came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller,
slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as
good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil
82
JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT
was written broadly and plainly on the face of the
other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be
the lethal side of man) had left on that body an
imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I
looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was con-
scious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome.
This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and
human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the
spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the
imperfect and divided countenance I had been
hitherto accustomed to call mine. And in so far I
was doubtless right. I have observed that when I
wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could
come near to me at first without a visible misgiving
of the flesh. This, as I take it, was because all
human beings, as we meet them, are commingled
out of good and evil : and Edward Hyde, alone in
the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.
I lingered but a moment at the mirror : the second
and conclusive experiment had yet to be attempted ;
it yet remained to be seen if I had lost my identity
beyond redemption and must flee before daylight
from a house that was no longer mine ; and, hurrying
back to my cabinet, I once more prepared and drank
the cup, once more suffered the pangs of dissolution,
and came to myself once more with the character,
the stature, and the face of Henry Jekyll.
That night I had come to the fatal cross roads.
Had I approached my discovery in a more noble
spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the
empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
have been otherwise, and from these agonies of death
and birth I had come forth an angel instead of a
fiend. The drug had no discriminating action ; it
was neither diabolical nor divine ; it but shook the
doors of the prison-house of my disposition ; and,
like the captives of Philippi, that which stood within
ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered ; my
evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to
seize the occasion ; and the thing that was projected
was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had now
two characters as well as two appearances, one was
wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry
Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose re-
formation and improvement I had already learned to
despair. The movement was thus wholly toward
the worse.
Even at that time I had not yet conquered my
aversion to the dryness of a life of study. I would
still be merrily disposed at times ; and as my plea-
sures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was
not only well known and highly considered, but
growing towards the elderly man, this incoherency
of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. It
was on this side that my new power tempted me
until I fell in slavery. I had but to drink the cup,
to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and
to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde.
I smiled at the notion ; it seemed to me at the time
to be humorous ; and I made my preparations with
the most studious care. I took and furnished that
house in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the
84
JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT
police ; and engaged as housekeeper a creature whom
I well knew to be silent and unscrupulous. On the
other side, I announced to my servants that a Mr.
Hyde (whom I described) was to have full liberty
and power about my house in the square ; and to
parry mishaps, I even called and made myself a
familiar object, in my second character. I next
drew up that will to which you so much objected ;
so that if anything befell me in the person of Doctor
.Tekyll, I could enter on that of Edward Hyde with-
out pecuniary loss. And thus fortified, as I sup-
posed, on every side, I began to profit by the strange
immunities of my position.
Men have before hired bravos to transact their
crimes, while their own person and reputation sat
under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for
his pleasures. I was the first that could thus plod
in the public eye with a load of genial respectability,
and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these
lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty.
But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety
was complete. Think of it — I did not even exist !
Let me but escape into my laboratory-door, give me
but a second or two to mix and swallow the draught
that I had always standing ready ; and whatever he
had done, Edward Hyde would pass away like the
stain of breath upon a mirror ; and there in his stead,
quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his
study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion,
would be Henry Jekyll.
The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my
85
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
disguise were, as I have said, undignified ; I would
scarce use a harder term. But in the hands of
Edward Hyde they soon began to turn towards the
monstrous. When I would come back from these
excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder
at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called
out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his
good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and
villainous ; his every act and thought centred on
self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any
degree of torture to another ; relentless like a man
of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before
the acts of Edward Hyde ; but the situation was
apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the
grasp of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and
Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse ;
he woke again to his good qualities seemingly un-
impaired ; he would even make haste, where it was
possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus
his conscience slumbered.
Into the details of the infamy at which I thus
connived (for even now I can scarce grant that I
committed it) I have no design of entering ; I mean
but to point out the warnings and the successive
steps with which my chastisement approached. I
met with one accident which, as it brought on no
consequence, I shall no more than mention. An act
of cruelty to a child aroused against me the anger of
a passer-by, whom I recognised the other day in the
person of your kinsman ; the doctor and the child's
family joined him ; there were moments when I
86
JEKYLLS FULL STATEMENT
feared for my life ; and at last, in order to pacify
their too just resentment, Edward Hyde had to
bring them to the door, and pay them in a cheque
drawn in the name of Henry Jekyll. But this
danger was easily eliminated from the future, by
opening an account at another bank in the name of
Edward Hyde himself; and when, by sloping my
own hand backward, I had supplied my double with
a signature, I thought I sat beyond the reach of
fate.
Some two months before the murder of Sir
Danvers, I had been out for one of my adventures,
had returned at a late hour, and woke the next day
in bed with somewhat odd sensations. It was in
vain I looked about me ; in vain I saw the decent
furniture and tall proportions of my room in the
square ; in vain that I recognised the pattern of the
bed-curtains and the design of the mahogany frame ;
something still kept insisting that I was not where I
was, that I had not wakened where I seemed to be,
but in the little room in Soho where I was accus-
tomed to sleep in the body of Edward Hyde. I
smiled to myself, and, in my psychological way,
began lazily to inquire into the elements of this
illusion, occasionally, even as I did so, dropping back
into a comfortable morning doze. I was still so
engaged when, in one of my more wakeful moments,
my eye fell upon my hand. Now the hand of Henry
Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional
in shape and size : it was large, firm, white, and
comely. But the hand which I now saw, clearly
8?
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London morn-
ing, lying half shut on the bed-clothes, was lean,
corded, knuckly, of a dusky pallor, and thickly shaded
with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand of
Edward Hyde.
I must have stared upon it for near half a minute,
sunk as I was in the mere stupidity of wonder,
before terror woke up in my breast as sudden and
startling as the crash of cymbals ; and bounding
from my bed, I rushed to the mirror. At the sight
that met my eyes my blood was changed into some-
thing exquisitely thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to
bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde.
How was this to be explained 1 ? I asked myself; and
then, with another bound of terror — how was it to
be remedied ? It was well on in the morning ; the
servants were up ; all my drugs were in the cabinet
— a long journey, down two pairs of stairs, through
the back passage, across the open court and through
the anatomical theatre, from where I was then
standing horror-struck. It might indeed be possible
to cover my face ; but of what use was that, when I
was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature ?
And then with an overpowering sweetness of relief,
it came back upon my mind that the servants were
already used to the coming and going of my second
self. I had soon dressed, as well as I was able, in
clothes of my own size : had soon passed through
the house, where Bradshaw stared and drew back at
seeing Mr. Hyde at such an hour and in such a
strange array ; and ten minutes later Dr. Jekyll had
JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT
returned to his own shape, and was sitting down,
with a darkened brow, to make a feint of break-
fasting.
Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable
incident, this reversal of my previous experience,
seemed, like the Babylonian ringer on the wall, to be
spelling out the letters of my judgment ; and I
began to reflect more seriously than ever before on
the issues and possibilities of my double existence.
That part of me which I had the power of projecting
had lately been much exercised and nourished ; it
had seemed to me of late as though the body of
Edward Hyde had grown in stature, as though
(when I wore that form) I were conscious of a more
generous tide of blood ; and I began to spy a danger
that, if this were much prolonged, the balance of my
nature might be permanently overthrown, the power
of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character
of Edward Hyde become irrevocably mine. The
power of the drug had not been always equally dis-
played. Once, very early in my career, it had
totally failed me ; since then I had been obliged on
more than one occasion to double, and once, with
infinite risk of death, to treble the amount ; and
these rare uncertainties had cast hitherto the sole
shadow on my contentment. Now, however, and in
the light of that morning's accident, I was led to
remark that whereas, in the beginning, the difficulty
had been to throw off the body of Jekyll, it had of
late, gradually but decidedly transferred itself to the
other side. All things therefore seemed to point to
89
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
this : that I was slowly losing hold of my original
and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated
with my second and worse.
Between these two, I now felt I had to choose.
My two natures had memory in common, but all
other faculties were most unequally shared between
them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the
most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy
gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and
adventures of Hyde ; but Hyde was indifferent to
Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain
bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals
himself from pursuit. Jekyll had more than a
father's interest ; Hyde had more than a son's indif-
ference. To cast in my lot with Jekyll was to die
to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged,
and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with
Hyde was to die to a thousand interests and aspira-
tions, and to become, at a blow and for ever, despised
and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal ;
but there was still another consideration in the
scales ; for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in
the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even
conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my
circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as
old and commonplace as man ; much the same in-
ducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted
and trembling sinner ; and it fell out with me, as it
falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I
chose the better part, and was found wanting in the
strength to keep to it.
90
JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT
Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented
doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest
hopes ; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty,
the comparative youth, the light step, leaping pulses,
and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the dis-
guise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with
some unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up
the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of
Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet.
For two months, however, I was true to my deter-
mination ; for two months I led a life of such
severity as I had never before attained to, and
enjoyed the compensations of an approving con-
science. But time began at last to obliterate the
freshness of my alarm ; the praises of conscience
began to grow into a thing of course ; I began to be
tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde strug-
gling after freedom ; and at last, in an hour of moral
weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed
the transforming draught.
I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons
with himself upon his vice, he is once out of five
hundred times affected by the dangers that he runs
through his brutish, physical insensibility ; neither
had I, long as I had considered my position, made
enough allowance for the complete moral insensi-
bility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the
leading characters of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by
these that I was punished. My devil had been long
caged, he came out roaring. I was conscious, even
when I took the draught, of a more unbridled, a
9i
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
more furious propensity to ill. It must have been
this, I suppose, that stirred in my soul that tempest
of impatience with which I listened to the civilities
of my unhappy victim ; I declare at least, before
God, no man morally sane could have been guilty of
that crime upon so pitiful a provocation ; and that
I struck in no more reasonable spirit than that in
which a sick child may break a plaything. But I
had voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancing
instincts, by which even the worst of us continues to
walk with some degree of steadiness among tempta-
tions ; and in my case, to be tempted, however
slightly, was to fall.
Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged.
With a transport of glee 1 mauled the unresisting
body, tasting delight from every blow ; and it was
not till weariness had begun to succeed, that I was
suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium, struck
through the heart by a cold thrill of terror. A mist
dispersed ; I saw my life to be forfeit ; and fled from
the scene of these excesses, at once glorying and
trembling, my lust of evil gratified and stimulated,
my love of life screwed to the topmost peg. I ran
to the house in Soho, and (to make assurance doubly
sure) destroyed my papers ; thence I set out through
the lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of
mind, gloating on my crime, light-headedly devising
others in the future, and yet still hastening and still
hearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger.
Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded
the draught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead
92
JEKYLIAS FULL STATEMENT
man. The pangs of transformation had not done
tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming
tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his
knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil
of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot, I saw
my life as a whole : I followed it up from the days
of childhood, when I had walked with my father's
hand, and through the self-denying toils of my pro-
fessional life, to arrive again and again, with the
same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the
evening. I could have screamed aloud ; I sought
with tears and prayers to smother down the crowd of
hideous images and sounds with which my memory
swarmed against me ; and still, between the petitions,
the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul.
As the acuteness of this remorse began to die away,
it was succeeded by a sense of joy. The problem of
my conduct was solved. Hyde was thenceforth
impossible ; whether I would or not, I was now
confined to the better part of my existence ; and
oh, how I rejoiced to think it ! with what willing
humility I embraced anew the restrictions of natural
life ! with what sincere renunciation I locked the
door by which I had so often gone and come, and
ground the key under my heel !
The next day came the news that the murder
had been overlooked, that the guilt of Hyde was
patent to the world, and that the victim was a man
high in public estimation. It was not only a crime,
it had been a tragic folly. I think I was glad to
know it; I think I was glad to have my better
93
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors
of the scaffold. Jekyll was now my city of refuge ;
let but Hyde peep out an instant, and the hands of
all men would be raised to take and slay him.
I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the
past; and I can say with honesty that my resolve
was fruitful of some good. You know yourself how
earnestly in the last months of last year, I laboured
to relieve suffering ; you know that much was done
for others, and that the days passed quietly, almost
happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that I
wearied of this beneficent and innocent life ; I think
instead that I daily enjoyed it more completely ;
but I was still cursed with my duality of purpose ;
and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the
lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently
chained down, began to growl for licence. Not that
I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde ; the bare idea of
that would startle me to frenzy : no, it was in my
own person that I was once more tempted to trifle
with my conscience ; and it was as an ordinary
secret sinner that I at last fell before the assaults of
temptation.
There comes an end to all things ; the most
capacious measure is filled at last ; and this brief
condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance
of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed ; the fall
seemed natural, like a return to the old days before
I had made my discovery. It was a fine, clear,
January day, wet under foot where the frost had
melted, but cloudless overhead ; and the Regents
94
JEKYLLS FULL STATEMENT
Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with
spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench ; the
animal within me licking the chops of memory ; the
spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent
penitence, but not yet moved to begin. After all,
I reflected, I was like my neighbours : and then I
smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing
my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their
neglect. And at the very moment of that vain-
glorious thought a qualm came over me, a horrid
nausea and the most deadly shuddering. These
passed away, and left me faint ; and then, as in its
turn the faintness subsided, I began to be aware of
a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater
boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the
bonds of obligation. I looked down ; my clothes
hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs ; the hand
that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was
once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had
been safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved —
the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home ;
and now I was the common quarry of mankind,
hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the
gallows.
My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly.
I have more than once observed that, in my second
character, my faculties seemed sharpened to a point
and my spirits more tensely elastic ; thus it came
about that, where Jekyll perhaps might have suc-
cumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment.
My drugs were in one of the presses of my cabinet ;
95
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
how was I to reach them ? That was the problem
that (crushing my temples in my hands) I set myself
to solve. The laboratory door I had closed. If I
sought to enter by the house, my own servants
would consign me to the gallows. I saw I must
employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon. How
was he to be reached ? how persuaded ? Supposing
that I escaped capture in the streets, how was I to
make my way into his presence ? and how should I,
an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the
famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague,
Dr. Jekyll ? Then I remembered that of my original
character, one part remained to me : I could write
my own hand ; and once I had conceived that
kindling spark, the way that I must follow became
lighted up from end to end.
Thereupon I arranged my clothes as best I could,
and summoning a passing hansom, drove to a hotel
in Portland Street, the name of which I chanced to
remember. At my appearance (which was indeed
comical enough, however tragic a fate these garments
covered) the driver could not conceal his mirth. I
gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of devilish
fury ; and the smile withered from his face — happily
for him — yet more happily for myself, for in another
instant I had certainly dragged him from his perch.
At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me with so
black a countenance as made the attendants tremble ;
not a look did they exchange in my presence ; but
obsequiously took my orders, led me to a private
room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde
96
JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT
in danger of his life was a creature new to me :
shaken with inordinate anger, strung to the pitch of
murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet the creature
was astute ; mastered his fury with a great effort of
the will ; composed his two important letters, one to
Lanyon and one to Poole ; and that he might
receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent
them out with directions that they should be regis-
tered.
Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the
private room, gnawing his nails ; there he dined,
sitting alone with his fears, the waiter visibly quailing
before his eye ; and thence, when the night was
fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed
cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of
the city. He, I say — I cannot say, I. That child
of Hell had nothing human ; nothing lived in him
but fear and hatred. And when at last, thinking
the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he dis-
charged the cab and ventured on foot, attired in his
misfitting clothes, an object marked out for obser-
vation, into the midst of the nocturnal passengers,
these two base passions raged within him like a
tempest. He walked fast, hunted by his fears,
chattering to himself, skulking through the less
frequented thoroughfares, counting the minutes that
still divided him from midnight. Once a woman
spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of lights. He
smote her in the face, and she fled.
When I came to myself at Lanyon 's, the horror
of my old friend perhaps affected me somewhat : I
8-g 97
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
do not know ; it was at least but a drop in the sea
to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon
these hours. A change had come over me. It was
no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror
of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon's
condemnation partly in a dream ; it was partly in a
dream that I came home to my own house and got
into bed. I slept after the prostration of the day,
with a stringent and profound slumber which not
even the nightmares that wrung me could avail to
break. I awoke in the morning shaken, weakened,
but refreshed. I still hated and feared the thought
of the brute that slept within me, and I had not, of
course, forgotten the appalling dangers of the day
before ; but 1 was once more at home, in my own
house and close to my drugs ; and gratitude for my
escape shone so strong in my soul that it almost
rivalled the brightness of hope.
I was stepping leisurely across the court after
breakfast, drinking the chill of the air with pleasure,
when I was seized again with those indescribable
sensations that heralded the change ; and I had but
the time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I
was once again raging and freezing with the passions
of Hyde. It took on this occasion a double dose to
recall me to myself ; and alas ! six hours after, as I
sat looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and
the drug had to be re-administered. In short, from
that day forth it seemed only by a great effort as of
gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation
of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance
98
JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT
of Jekyll. At all hours of the day and night I
would be taken with the premonitory shudder ;
above all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in
my chair, it was always as Hyde that I awakened.
Under the strain of this continually-impending doom,
and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned
myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible
to man, I became, in my own person, a creature
eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both
in body and mind, and solely occupied by one
thought : the horror of my other self. But when I
slept, or when the virtue of the medicine wore off,
I would leap almost without transition (for the pangs
of transformation grew daily less marked) into the
possession of a fancy brimming with images of terror,
a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a body
that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging
energies of life. The powers of Hyde seemed to
have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And
certainly the hate that now divided them was equal
on each side. With Jekyll, it was a thing of vital
instinct. He had now seen the full deformity of
that creature that shared with him some of the
phenomena of consciousness, and was co-heir with
him to death : and beyond these links of community,
which in themselves made the most poignant part
of his distress, he thought of Hyde, for all his energy
of life, as of something not only hellish but inorganic.
This was the shocking thing ; that the slime of the
pit seemed to utter cries and voices ; that the
amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned ; that what
99
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices
of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror
was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an
eye ; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter
and felt it struggle to be born ; and at every hour of
weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed
against him, and deposed him out of life. The
hatred of Hyde for Jekyll was of a different order.
His terror of the gallows drove him continually to
commit temporary suicide, and return to his sub-
ordinate station of a part instead of a person ; but
he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency
into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented
the dislike with which he was himself regarded.
Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me,
scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages
of my books, burning the letters and destroying the
portrait of my father ; and indeed, had it not been
for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined
himself in order to involve me in the ruin. But
his love of life is wonderful ; I go further : I, who
sicken and freeze at the mere thought of him, when
I recall the abjection and passion of this attachment,
and when I know how he fears my power to cut him
off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.
It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to
prolong this description ; no one has ever suffered
such torments, let that suffice ; and yet even to
these, habit brought — no, not alleviation — but a
certain callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of
despair ; and my punishment might have gone on
ioo
.TEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT
for years, but for the last calamity which has now
fallen, and which has finally severed me from my
own face and nature. My provision of the salt, which
had never been renewed since the date of the first
experiment, began to run low. I sent out for a
fresh supply, and mixed the draught ; the ebullition
followed, and the first change of colour, not the
second ; I drank it and it was without efficiency.
You will learn from Poole how I have had London
ransacked ; it was in vain ; and I am now persuaded
that my first supply was impure, and that it was
that unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the
draught.
About a week has passed, and I am now finishing
this statement under the influence of the last of the
old powders. This, then, is the last time, short of
a miracle, that Henry Jekyll can think his own
thoughts or see his own face (now how sadly altered!)
in the glass. Nor must I delay too long to bring
my writing to an end ; for if my narrative has
hitherto escaped destruction, it has been by a com-
bination of great prudence and great good luck.
Should the throes of change take me in the act of
writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces ; but if some
time shall have elapsed after I have laid it by, his
wonderful selfishness and circumscription to the
moment will probably save it once again from the
action of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom
that is closing on us both has already changed and
crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I shall
again and for ever re-indue that hated personality, I
IOI
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my
chair, or continue, with the most strained and fear-
struck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down
this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to
every sound of menace. Will Hyde die upon the
scaffold ? or will he find the courage to release
himself at the last moment ? God knows ; I am
careless ; this is my true hour of death, and what is
to follow concerns another than myself. Here then,
as I lay doAvn the pen and proceed to seal up my
confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry
Jekyll to an end.
102
THE MERRY MEN
AND OTHER TALES
AND FABLES
First Collected Edition: Chatto and Windus,
London, 1887.
Originally published :
1. Cornhill Magazine, June and July 1882.
11. Cornhill Magazine, January 1878.
in. Unwin's Annual, 1886.
iv. Cornhill Magazine, October 1881.
v. Court and Society Review, Christmas 1885.
vi. Longman's Magazine, April and May 1883.
CONTENTS
De<
iication .....
107
i.
The Merry Men
i. Eilean Aros ....
109
ii. What the Wreck had brought to Aros
118
iii. Land and Sea in Sandag Bay .
134
iv. The Gale ....
148
v. A Man out of the Sea .
163
ii.
Will o' the Mill
180
in.
Markheim ... .
219
IV.
Thrawn Janet ....
244
v.
Olalla .....
260
VI.
The Treasure of Franchard
i. By the Dying Mountebank
323
ii. Morning Talk ....
328
iii. The Adoption ....
336
105
THE MERRY MEN
PAGE
The Treasure of Franchard (continued)
iv. The Education of a Philosopher . 346
v. Treasure Trove . . . . 359
vi. A Criminal Investigation, in two Parts 376
vii. The Fall of the House of Desprez . 390
viii. The Wages of Philosophy . . 401
106
DEDICATION
My dear Lady Taylor,
To your name, if I wrote on brass, I could add nothing";
it has been already written higher than I coidd dream to reach,
by a strong and a dear hand ; and if I now dedicate to you
these talcs, it is not as the writer ivho brings you his work, but
as the friend who would remind you of his affection.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Skerryvore, Bournemouth.
107
THE MERRY MEN
CHAPTER I
EILEx\N AROS
It was a beautiful morning in the late July when I
set forth on foot for the last time for Aros. A boat
had put me ashore the night before at Grisapol ; I
had such breakfast as the little inn afforded, and,
leaving all my baggage till I had an occasion to
come round for it by sea, struck right across the
promontory with a cheerful heart.
I was far from being a native of these parts,
springing, as I did, from an unmixed lowland stock.
But an uncle of mine, Gordon Darnaway, after a
poor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had
married a young wife in the islands ; Mary Maclean
she was called, the last of her family ; and when she
died in giving birth to a daughter, Aros, the sea-girt
farm, had remained in his possession. It brought
him in nothing but the means of life, as I was well
aware ; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had
pursued ; he feared, cumbered as he was with the
109
THE MERRY MEN
young child, to make a fresh adventure upon life ;
and remained in Aros, biting his nails at destiny.
Years passed over his head in that isolation, and
brought neither help nor contentment. Meantime
our family was dying out in the lowlands ; there is
little luck for any of that race ; and perhaps my
father was the luckiest of all, for not only was he
one of the last to die, but he left a son to his name
and a little money to support it. I was a student
of Edinburgh University, living well enough at my
own charges, but without kith or kin ; when some
news of me found its way to Uncle Gordon on the
Ross of Grisapol ; and he, as he was a man who held
blood thicker than water, wrote to me the day he
heard of my existence, and taught me to count Aros
as my home. Thus it was that I came to spend my
vacations in that part of the country, so far from all
society and comfort, between the codfish and the
moorcocks ; and thus it was that now, when I had
done with my classes, I was returning thither with
so light a heart that July day.
The Ross, as we call it, is a promontory neither
wide nor high, but as rough as God made it to this
day ; the deep sea on either hand of it, full of rugged
isles and reefs most perilous to seamen — all over-
looked from the eastward by some very high cliffs
and the great peak of Ben Kyaw. The Mountain
of the Mist, they say the words signify in the Gaelic
tongue ; and it is well named. For that hill-top,
which is more than three thousand feet in height,
catches all the clouds that come blowing from the
no
EI LEAN AROS
seaward ; and, indeed, I used often to think that it
must make them for itself; since when all heaven
was clear to the sea-level, there would ever be a
streamer on Ben Kyaw. It brought water, too, and
was mossy 1 to the top in consequence. 1 have seen
us sitting in broad sunshine on the Ross, and the
rain falling black like crape upon the mountain.
But the wetness of it made it often appear more
beautiful to my eyes ; for when the sun struck upon
the hillsides there were many wet rocks and water-
courses that shone like jewels even as far as Aros,
fifteen miles away.
The road that I followed was a cattle-track. It
twisted so as nearly to double the length of my
journey ; it went over rough boulders so that a man
had to leap from one to another, and through soft
bottoms where the moss came nearly to the knee.
There was no cultivation anywhere, and not one
house in the ten miles from Grisapol to Aros.
Houses of course there were — three at least ; but
they lay so far on the one side or the other that no
stranger could have found them from the track. A
large part of the Ross is covered with big granite
rocks, some of them larger than a two-roomed house,
one beside another, with fern and deep heather in
between them where the vipers breed. Any way the
wind was, it was always sea-air, as salt as on a ship ;
the gulls were as free as moorfowl over all the Ross ;
and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would
kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the
1 Boggy.
Ill
THE MERRY MEN
very midst of the land, on a day of wind and a higli
spring, I have heard the Roost roaring like a battle
where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful
voices of the breakers that we call the Merry Men.
Aros itself — Aros Jay, I have heard the natives
call it, and they say it means the House of God —
Aros itself was not properly a piece of the Ross, nor
was it quite an islet. It formed the south-west
corner of the land, fitted close to it, and was in one
place only separated from the coast by a little gut of
the sea, not forty feet across the narrowest. When
the tide was full, this was clear and still, like a pool
on a land river ; only there was a difference in the
weeds and fishes, and the water itself was green
instead of brown ; but when the tide went out, in
the bottom of the ebb, there was a day or two in
every month when you could pass dryshod from Aros
to the mainland. There was some good pasture,
where my uncle fed the sheep he lived on ; perhaps
the feed was better because the ground rose higher
on the islet than the main level of the Ross, but this
I am not skilled enough to settle. The house was
a good one for that country, two stories high. It
looked westward over a bay, with a pier hard by
for a boat, and from the door you could watch the
vapours blowing on Ben Kyaw.
On all this part of the coast, and especially near
Aros, these great granite rocks that I have spoken
of go down together in troops into the sea, like cattle
on a summer's day. There they stand, for all the
world like their neighbours ashore ; only the salt
112
EILEAN AROS
water sobbing between them instead of the quiet
earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming on their sides
instead of heather ; and the great sea-conger to
wreathe about the base of them instead of the
poisonous viper of the land. On calm days you can
go wandering between them in a boat for hours,
echoes following you about the labyrinth ; but when
the sea is up, Heaven help the man that hears that
caldron boiling.
Off the south-west end of Aros these blocks are
very many, and much greater in size. Indeed, they
must grow monstrously bigger out to sea, for there
must be ten sea miles of open water sown with them
as thick as a country place with houses, some stand-
ing thirty feet above the tides, some covered, but
all perilous to ships ; so that on a clear, westerly
blowing day, I have counted, from the top of Aros,
the great rollers breaking white and heavy over as
many as six-and-forty buried reefs. But it is nearer
in shore that the danger is worst ; for the tide, here
running like a mill-race, makes a long belt of broken
water — a Roost we call it — at the tail of the land.
I have often been out there in a dead calm at the
slack of the tide ; and a strange place it is, with
the sea swirling and combing up and boiling like
the caldrons of a linn, and now and again a little
dancing mutter of sound as though the Roost were
talking to itself. But when the tide begins to run
again, and above all in heavy weather, there is no
man could take a boat within half a mile of it, nor
a ship afloat that could either steer or live in such
8— h 113
THE MERRY MEN
a place You can hear the roaring of it six miles
away. At the seaward end there conies the strongest
of the bubble : and it "s here that these big breakers
dance together — the dance of death, it may be called
— that have got the name, in these parts, of the
Merry Men. I have heard it said that they run
fifty feet high : but that must be the green water
only, for the spray runs twice as high as that
Whether they got the name from their movements,
which are swift and antic, or from the shouting they
make about the turn of the tide, so that all Aros
shakes with it is more than I can tell
The truth is. that in a south-westerly wind that
part of our archipelago is no better than a trap. If
a ship got through the reefs, and weathered the
Merry Men. it would be to come ashore on the
south coast of Aros, in Sandag Bay. where so many
dismal things befell our family, as I propose to tell.
The thought of all these dangers, in the place I
knew so long, makes me particularly welcome the
works now going forward to set lights upon the
headlands and buoys along the channels of our iron-
bound, inhospitable islands.
T.e country people had many a story about Aros,
as I used to hear from my uncle s man. Rorie. an
old servant of the Macleans, who had transferred
his services without afterthought on the occasion of
the marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky
creature, a sea-kelpie, that dwelt and did business
in some fearful manner of his own among the boiling
breakers of the Roost A mermaid had once met a
114
EILEAX AROS
piper on Sandag beach, and there sang to him a long,
bright midsummer's night, so that in the morning
he was found stricken crazy, and from thenceforward,
till the day he died, said only one form of words ;
what they were in the original Gaelic I cannot tell,
but they were thus translated : ' Ah. the sweet
singing out of the sea.' Seals that haunted on that
coast have been known to speak to man in his own
tongue, presaging great disasters. It was here that
a certain saint fir^t landed on his voyage out of
Ireland to convert the Hebrideans. And. indeed.
I think he had some claim to be called saint : for.
with the boats of that past age. to make so rough a
passage, and land on such a ticklish coast., was surely
not far short of the miraculous. It was to him. or
to some of Ms monkish underlings who had a cell
there, that the islet owes its holy and beautiful
name, the House of God.
Among these old wives' stories there was one
which I was inclined to hear with more credulity.
A-? I was told, in that tempest which scattered the
ships of the Invincible Armada over all the north
and west of Scotland, one great vessel came ashore
on Aros. and before the eyes of some solitary people
on a hill-top, went down in a moment with all hands.
her colours flying even as she sank. There was some
likelihood in this tale : for another of that fleet lay
sunk od the north side, twenty miles from Grisapol.
It was told, I thought, with more detail and gravity
than its companion stories, and there was one par-
ticularity which went far to convince me of its truth :
US
THE MERRY MEN
the name, that is, of the ship was still remembered,
and sounded, in my ears, Spanishly. The Espirito
Santo they called it, a great ship of many decks of
guns, laden with treasure and grandees of Spain, and
fierce soldadoes, that now lay fathom deep to all
eternity, done with her wars and voyages, in Sandag
Bay, upon the west of Aros. No more salvos of
ordnance for that tall ship, the ' Holy Spirit,' no
more fair winds or happy ventures ; only to rot
there deep in the sea-tangle and hear the shoutings
of the Merry Men as the tide ran high about the
island. It was a strange thought to me first and
last, and only grew stranger as I learned the more
of Spain, from which she had set sail with so proud
a company, and King Philip, the wealthy king, that
sent her on that voyage.
And now I must tell you, as I walked from
Grisapol that day, the Espiiito Santo was very much
in my reflections. I had been favourably remarked
by our then Principal in Edinburgh College, that
famous writer, Dr. Robertson, and by him had been
set to work on some papers of an ancient date to
rearrange and sift of what was worthless ; and in one
of these, to my great wonder, I found a note of this
very ship, the Espirito Santo, with her captain's
name, and how she carried a great part of the
Spaniards' treasure, and had been lost upon the
Ross of Grisapol ; but in what particular spot
the wild tribes of that place and period would give
no information to the king's inquiries. Putting one
thing with another, and taking our island tradition
116
EILEAN AROS
together with this note of old King Jamie's perqui-
sitions after wealth, it had come strongly on my
mind that the spot for which he sought in vain
could be no other than the small bay of Sandag on
my uncle's land ; and being a fellow of a mechanical
turn, I had ever since been plotting how to weigh
that good ship up again with all her ingots, ounces,
and doubloons, and bring back our house of Darna-
way to its long-forgotten dignity and wealth.
This was a design of which I soon had reason to
repent. My mind was sharply turned on different
reflections ; and since I became the witness of a
strange judgment of God's, the thought of dead
men's treasures has been intolerable to my conscience.
But even at that time I must acquit myself of sordid
greed ; for if I desired riches, it was not for their
own sake, but for the sake of a person who was
dear to my heart — my uncle's daughter, Mary Ellen.
She had been educated well, and had been a time
to school upon the mainland ; which, poor girl, she
would have been happier without. For Aros was
no place for her, with old Rorie the servant, and
her father, who was one of the unhappiest men in
Scotland, plainly bred up in a country place among
Cameronians, long a skipper sailing out of the Clyde
about the islands, and now, with infinite discontent,
managing his sheep and a little 'long shore fishing for
the necessary bread. If it was sometimes weariful
to me, who was there but a month or two, you may
fancy what it was to her who dwelt in that same
desert all the year round, with the sheep and flying
117
THE MERRY MEN
sea-gulls, and the Merry Men singing and dancing
in the Roost !
CHAPTER II
WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS
It was half-flood when I got the length of Aros ;
and there was nothing for it but to stand on the far
shore and whistle for Rorie with the boat. I had
no need to repeat the signal. At the first sound,
Mary was at the door flying a handkerchief by way
of answer, and the old long-legged serving-man was
shambling down the gravel to the pier. For all his
hurry, it took him a long while to pull across the
bay ; and I observed him several times to pause, go
into the stern, and look over curiously into the wake.
As he came nearer, he seemed to me aged and
haggard, and I thought he avoided my eye. The
coble had been repaired, with two new thwarts and
several patches of some rare and beautiful foreign
wood, the name of it unknown to me.
' Why, Rorie,' said I, as Ave began the return
voyage, ' this is fine wood. How came you by
that ? '
' It will be hard to cheesel,' Rorie opined re-
luctantly ; and just then, dropping the oars, he
made another of those dives into the stern which I
had remarked as he came across to fetch me, and,
leaning his hand on my shoulder, stared with an
awful look into the waters of the bay.
118
WHAT THE WRECK BROUGHT
' What is wrong ? ' I asked, a good deal startled.
' It will be a great feesh,' said the old man,
returning to his oars ; and nothing more could I get
out of him, but strange glances and an ominous
nodding of the head. In spite of myself, I was
infected with a measure of uneasiness ; I turned
also, and studied the wake. The water was still and
transparent, but, out here in the middle of the bay,
exceeding deep. For some time I could see naught ;
but at last it did seem to me as if something dark
— a great fish, or perhaps only a shadow — followed
studiously in the track of the moving coble. And
then I remembered one of Rorie's superstitions :
how in a ferry in Morven, in some great, extermi-
nating feud among the clans, a fish, the like of it
unknown in all our waters, followed for some years
the passage of the ferry-boat, until no man dared to
make the crossing.
' He will be waiting for the right man,' said Rorie.
Mary met me on the beach, and led me up the
brae and into the house of Aros. Outside and inside
there were many changes. The garden was fenced
with the same wood that I had noted in the boat ;
there were chairs in the kitchen covered with strange
brocade ; curtains of brocade hung from the window ;
a clock stood silent on the dresser ; a lamp of brass
was swinging from the roof; the table was set for
dinner with the finest of linen and silver ; and all
these new riches were displayed in the plain old
kitchen that I knew so well, with the high-backed
settle, and the stools, and the closet bed for Rorie ;
119
THE MERRY MEN
with the wide chimney the sun shone into, and the
clear-smouldering peats ; with the pipes on the
mantelshelf and the three-cornered spittoons, filled
with sea-shells instead of sand, on the floor ; with
the bare stone walls and the bare wooden floor, and
the three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole
adornment— poor man's patchwork, the like of it
unknown in cities, woven with homespun, and
Sunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench
of rowing. The room, like the house, had been a
sort of wonder in that country-side, it was so neat
and habitable ; and to see it now, shamed by these
incongruous additions, filled me with indignation
and a kind of anger. In view of the errand I had
come upon to Aros, the feeling was baseless and
unjust ; but it burned high, at the first moment, in
my heart.
' Mary, girl,' said I, ' this is the place I had learned
to call my home, and I do not know it.'
' It is my home by nature, not by the learning,'
she replied ; ' the place I was born and the place
I 'm like to die in ; and I neither like these changes,
nor the way they came, nor that which came with
them. I would have liked better, under God's
pleasure, they had gone down into the sea, and the
Merry Men were dancing on them now.'
Mary was always serious ; it was perhaps the only
trait that she shared with her father ; but the tone
with which she uttered these words was even graver
than of custom.
' Ay,' said I, ' I feared it came by wreck, and
1 20
WHAT THE WRECK BROUGHT
that 's by death ; yet when my father died I took
his goods without remorse.'
* Your father died a clean-strae death, as the folk
say,' said Mary.
'True,' I returned; 'and a wreck is like a judg-
ment. What was she called ? '
'They ca'd her the Christ-Anna,' 1 said a voice
behind me ; and, turning round, I saw my uncle
standing in the doorway.
He was a sour, small, bilious man, with a long
face and very dark eyes ; fifty-six years old, sound
and active in body, and with an air somewhat
between that of a shepherd and that of a man
following the sea. He never laughed, that I heard ;
read long at the Bible ; prayed much, like the
Cameronians he had been brought up among ; and
indeed, in many ways, used to remind me of one
of the hill-preachers in the killing times before the
Revolution. But he never got much comfort, nor
even, as I used to think, much guidance, by his
piety. He had his black fits when he was afraid of
hell ; but he had led a rough life, to which he would
look back with envy, and was still a rough, cold,
gloomy man.
As he came in at the door out of the sunlight,
with his bonnet on his head and a pipe hanging
in his button-hole, he seemed, like Rorie, to have
grown older and paler, the lines were deeplier
ploughed upon his face, and the whites of his eyes
were yellow, like old stained ivory, or the bones of
the dead.
121
THE MERRY MEN
' Ay,' he repeated, dwelling upon the first part of
the word, 'the Christ-Anna. It's an awfu' name.'
I made him my salutations, and complimented
him upon his look of health ; for I feared he had
perhaps been ill.
' I 'm in the body,' he replied, ungraciously enough ;
' aye in the body and the sins of the body, like
yoursel'. — Denner,' he said abruptly to Mary, and
then ran on, to me : ' They 're grand braws, thir that
we hae gotten, are they no' ? Yon 's a bonny knock, 1
but it '11 no gang ; and the napery 's by-ordnar.
Bonny, bairnly braws ; it 's for the like o' them folk
sells the peace of God that passeth understanding ;
it 's for the like o' them, an' maybe no' even sae
muckle worth, folk daunton God to His face and
burn in muckle hell ; and it 's for that reason the
Scripture ca's them, as I read the passage, the
accursed thing. — Mary, ye girzie,' he interrupted
himself to cry with some asperity, ' what for hae ye
no' put out the twa candlesticks ? '
' Why should we need them at high noon ? ' she
asked.
But my uncle was not to be turned from his idea.
' We 11 bruik 2 them while we may,' he said ; and so
two massive candlesticks of wrought silver were
added to the table equipage, already so unsuited to
that rough sea-side farm.
' She cam' ashore Februar' 10, about ten at nicht,'
he went on to me. ' There was nae wind, and a sair
run o' sea ; and she was in the sook o' the Roost, as
1 Clock. 2 Enjoy.
122
WHAT THE WRECK BROUGHT
I jaloose. We had seen her a' day, Rorie and me,
beating to the wind. She wasna a handy craft,
I 'm thinking, that Christ- Anna ; for she would
neither steer nor stey wi' them. A sair day they
had of it ; their hands was never aft' the sheets, and
it perishin' cauld — ower cauld to snaw ; and aye they
would get a bit nip o' wind, and awa' again, to pit
the emp'y hope into them. Eh, man ! but they had
a sair day for the last o't ! He would have had a
prood, prood heart that won ashore upon the back
o' that.'
' And were all lost ? ' I cried. ' God help them ! '
' Wheesht ! ' he said sternly. ' Nane shall pray
for the deid on my hearth-stane.'
I disclaimed a Popish sense for my ejaculation ;
and he seemed to accept my disclaimer with unusual
facility, and ran on once more upon what had evi-
dently become a favourite subject.
' We fand her in Sandag Bay, Rorie an' me, and
a' thae braws in the inside of her. There 's a kittle
bit, ye see, about Sandag ; whiles the sook rins
strong for the Merry Men ; an' whiles again, when
the tides makin' hard an' ye can hear the Roost
blawin' at the far-end of Aros, there comes a back-
spang of current straucht into Sandag Bay. Weel,
there 's the thing that got the grip on the Christ-
Anna. She but to have come in ram-stam an' stern
forrit ; for the bows of her are aften under, and the
back-side of her is clear at hie-water o' neaps. But,
man ! the dunt that she cam doon wi' when she
struck ! Lord save us a' ! but it 's an unco life to be
123
THE MERRY MEN
a sailor — a cauld, wan chancy life. Mony 's the gliff
I got mysel' in the great deep ; and why the Lord
should hae made yon unco water is mair than ever
I could win to understand. He made the vales and
the pastures, the bonny green yaird, the halesome,
canty land —
And now they shout and sing to Thee,
For Thou hast made them glad,
as the Psalms say in the metrical version. No' that
I would preen my faith to that clink neither ; but
it 's bonny, and easier to mind. ' Who go to sea in
ships,' they hae't again —
and in
Great waters trading be,
Within the deep these men God's works
And His great wonders see.
Weel, it's easy sayin' sae. Maybe Dauvit wasna
very weel acquant wi' the sea. But, troth, if it
wasna prentit in the Bible, I wad whiles be temp'it
to think it wasna the Lord, but the muckle, black
deil that made the sea. There's naething good
comes oot o't but the fish ; an' the spentacle o' God
riding on the tempest, to be shiire, whilk would be
what Dauvit was likely ettling at. But, man, they
were sair wonders that God showed to the Christ-
Anna — wonders, do I ca' them ? Judgments rather :
judgments in the mirk nicht among the draygons o'
the deep. And their souls — to think o' that — their
souls, man, maybe no prepared ! The sea — a muckle
yett to hell ! '
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WHAT THE WRECK BROUGHT
I observed, as my uncle spoke, that his voice
was unnaturally moved and his manner unwontedly
demonstrative. He leaned forward at these last
words, for example, and touched me on the knee
with his spread ringers, looking up into my face
with a certain pallor, and I could see that his eyes
shone with a deep-seated fire, and that the lines
about his mouth were drawn and tremulous.
Even the entrance of Rorie, and the beginning
of our meal, did not detach him from his train of
thought beyond a moment. He condescended, in-
deed, to ask me some questions as to my success at
College, but I thought it was with half his mind;
and even in his extempore grace, which was, as
usual, long and wandering, I could find the trace of
his pre-occupation, praying, as he did, that God
would 'remember in mercy fower puir, feckless,
fiddling, sinful creatures here by their lee-lane be-
side the great and dowie waters.'
Soon there came an interchange of speeches be-
tween him and Rorie.
1 Was it there ? ' asked my uncle.
' Ou ay ! ' said Rorie.
I observed that they both spoke in a manner of
aside, and with some show of embarrassment, and
that Mary herself appeared to colour, and looked
down on her plate. Partly to show my knowledge,
and so relieve the party from an awkward strain,
partly because I was curious, I pursued the subject.
' You mean the fish ? ' I asked.
' Whatten fish ? ' cried my uncle. ' Fish, quo 1
125
THE MERRY MEN
he ! Fish ! Your een are fu" o' fatness, man ; your
heid dozened wi* carnal leir. Fish ! it 's a bogle !'
He spoke with great vehemence, as though angry ;
and perhaps I was not very willing to be put down
so shortly., for young men are disputatious. At least
I remember I retorted hotly, crying out upon childish
superstitions.
■ And ye come frae the College ! ' sneered Uncle
Gordon. * Gude kens what they learn folk there ;
it 's no' muckle service anyway. Do ye think, man,
that there 's naething in a' yon saut wilderness o' a
world oot wast there, wi' the sea-grasses growin', an'
the sea-beasts fechtin', an' the sun glintin' down into
it, day by day ? Xa ; the sea 's like the land, but
fearsomer. If there 's folk ashore, there 's folk in the
sea — deid they may be, but they 're folk whatever ;
and as for deils, there 's nane that 's like the sea-deils.
There 's no sae muckle harm in the land-deils, when
a's said and done. Lang syne, when I was a callant
in the south country, I mind there was an auld, bald
bogle in the Peewie Moss. I got a glisk o' him
mvsel', sittin' on his hunkers in a hag, as grey 's a
tombstane. An', troth, he was a fearsome-like taed.
But he steered naebody. Nae doobt, if ane that was
a reprobate, ane the Lord hated, had gane by there
wi* his sin still upon his stamach, nae doobt the
creature would hae lowped upo' the likes o' him.
But there 's deils in the deep sea would yoke on a
communicant ! Eh, sirs, if ye had gane doon wi' the
puir lads in the Christ- Anna, ye would ken by now
the mercy o' the seas. If ye had sailed it for as lang
126
WHAT THE WRECK BROUGHT
as me, ye would hate the thocht of it as I do. If ye
had but used the een God gave ye, ye would hae
learned the wickedness o' that fa use, saut, cauld,
bullering creature, and of a' that's in it by the
Lord's permission : labsters an' partans, an' sic-like,
howking in the deid ; muckle, gutsy, blawing whales ;
an' fish — the hale clan o' them — cauld- warned, blind-
ee'd uncanny ferlies. Oh, sirs,' he cried, 'the horror
— the horror o' the sea ! '
We were all somewhat staggered by this outburst ;
and the speaker himself, after that last hoarse apo-
strophe, appeared to sink gloomily into his own
thoughts. But Rorie, who was greedy of supersti-
tious lore, recalled him to the subject by a question.
' You will not ever have seen a teevil of the sea ? '
he asked.
• No' clearly,' replied the other. ' I misdoobt if a
mere man could see ane clearly and conteenue in the
body. I hae sailed wi' a lad— they ca'd him Sandy
Gabart ; he saw ane, shlire eneuch, an' shure eneuch
it was the end of him. We were seeven days oot
frae the Clyde — a sair wark we had had — gaun north
wi' seeds an' braws an' things for the Macleod. We
had got in ower near under the Cutchull'ns, an' had
just gane about by Soa, an' were off on a long tack,
we thocht would maybe hauld as far 's Copnahow.
I mind the nicht weel ; a mime smoored wi' mist ; a
fine-gaim breeze upon the water, but no steedy ; an'
— what nane o' us likit to hear — anither wund gurlin'
owerheid, amang thae fearsome, auld stane craigs o'
the Cutchull'ns. Weel, Sandy was forrit wi' the jib
127
THE MERRY MEN
sheet ; we couldna see him for the mains'l, that had
just begude to draw, when a' at ance he gied a skirl.
I luffed for my life, for I thocht we were ower near
Soa ; but na, it wasna that, it was puir Sandy
Gabart's deid skreigh, or near-hand, for he was deid
in half an hour. A't he could tell was that a sea-
deil, or sea-bogle, or sea-spenster, or sic-like, had
clum up by the bowsprit, an' gien him ae cauld,
uncanny look. An', or the life was oot o' Sandy's
body, we kent weel what the thing betokened, and
why the wund gurled in the taps o' the Cutchull'ns ;
for doon it cam' — a wund do I ca' it ! it was the
wund o' the Lord's anger — an' a' that nicht we focht
like men dementit, and the neist that we kenned we
were ashore in Loch Uskevagh, an' the cocks were
crawin' in Benbecula.'
' It will have been a merman,' Rorie said.
1 A merman ! ' screamed my uncle with immeasur-
able scorn. * Auld wives' clavers ! There 's nae sic
things as mermen.'
' But what was the creature like V I asked.
* What like was it ? Gude forbid that we suld ken
what like it was ! It had a kind of a heid upon it —
man could say nae mair.'
Then Rorie, smarting under the affront, told
several tales of mermen, mermaids, and sea-horses
that had come ashore upon the islands and attacked
the crews of boats upon the sea ; and my uncle,
in spite of his incredulity, listened with uneasy
interest.
'Aweel, aweel,' he said, 'it may be sae ; I may
128
WHAT THE WRECK BROUGHT
be wrang ; but I find nae word o' mermen in the
Scriptures.'
'And you will find nae word of Aros Roost,
maybe,' objected Rorie, and his argument appeared
to carry weight.
When dinner was over, my uncle carried me forth
with him to a bank behind the house. It was a very
hot and quiet afternoon ; scarce a ripple anywhere
upon the sea, nor any voice but the familiar voice of
sheep and gulls ; and perhaps in consequence of this
repose in nature, my kinsman showed himself more
rational and tranquil than before. He spoke evenly
and almost cheerfully of my career, with every now
and then a reference to the lost ship or the treasures
it had brought to Aros. For my part, I listened to
him in a sort of trance, gazing with all my heart on
that remembered scene, and drinking gladly the sea-
air and the smoke of peats that had been lit by Mary.
Perhaps an hour had passed when my uncle, who
had all the while been covertly gazing on the surface
of the little bay, rose to his feet and bade me follow
his example. Now I should say that the great run
of tide at the south-west end of Aros exercises a per-
turbing influence round all the coast. In Sandag
Bay, to the south, a strong current runs at certain
periods of the flood and ebb respectively ; but in this
northern bay — Aros Bay, as it is called — where the
house stands and on which my uncle was now gazing,
the only sign of disturbance is towards the end of
the ebb, and even then it is too slight to be remark-
able. When there is any swell, nothing can be seen
8—i 129
THE MERRY MEN
at all ; but when it is calm, as it often is, there
appear certain strange, undecipherable marks — sea-
runes, as we may name them — on the glassy surface
of the bay. The like is common in a thousand
places on the coast ; and many a boy must have
amused himself as I did, seeking to read in them
some reference to himself or those he loved. It was
to these marks that my uncle now directed my
attention, struggling, as he did so, with an evident
reluctance.
' Do you see yon scart upo' the water ? ' he in-
quired ; ' yon ane wast the grey stane ? Ay ?
Weel, it '11 no' be like a letter, wull it ? '
' Certainly it is,' I replied. ' I have often remarked
it. It is like a C
He heaved a sigh as if heavily disappointed with
my answer, and then added below his breath : ' Ay,
for the Christ- Anna'
'I used to suppose, sir, it was for myself,' said I ;
'for my name is Charles.'
' And so ye saw 't afore ? ' he ran on, not heeding
my remark. ' Weel, weel, but that 's unco strange.
Maybe it's been there waitin', as a man wad say,
through a' the weary ages. Man, but that's awfu'.'
And then, breaking off: 'Ye '11 no' see anither, will
ye ? ' he asked.
' Yes,' said I. ' I see another very plainly, near
the Ross side, where the road comes down — an M.'
' An M,' he repeated very low ; and then, again
after another pause : ' An' what wad ye make o'
that ? ' he inquired
130
WHAT THE WRECK BROUGHT
' I had always thought it to mean Mary, sir,' I
answered, growing somewhat red, convinced as I
was in my own mind that I was on the threshold
of a decisive explanation.
But we were each following his own train of
thought to the exclusion of the other's. My uncle
once more paid no attention to my words ; only
hung his head and held his peace ; and I might have
been led to fancy that he had not heard me, if his
next speech had not contained a kind of echo from
my own.
' I would say naething o' thae clavers to Mary,' he
observed, and began to walk forward.
There is a belt of turf along the side of Aros Bay
where walking is easy ; and it was along this that I
silently followed my silent kinsman. I was perhaps
a little disappointed at having lost so good an oppor-
tunity to declare my love ; but I was at the same
time far more deeply exercised at the change that
had befallen my uncle. He was never an ordinary,
never, in the strict sense, an amiable, man ; but there
was nothing in even the worst that I had known of
him before, to prepare me for so strange a transfor-
mation. It was impossible to close the eyes against
one fact ; that he had, as the saying goes, something
on his mind ; and as I mentally ran over the different
words which might be represented by the letter M —
misery, mercy, marriage, money, and the like— I was
arrested with a sort of start by the word murder. I
was still considering the ugly sound and fatal mean-
ing of the word, when the direction of our walk
131
THE MERRY MEN
brought us to a point from which a view was to be
had to either side, back towards Aros Bay and home-
stead, and forward on the ocean, dotted to the north
with isles, and lying to the southward blue and open
to the sky. There my guide came to a halt, and
stood staring for a while on that expanse. Then he
turned to me and laid a hand on my arm.
' Ye think there 's naething there ? ' he said, point-
ing with his pipe ; and then cried out aloud, with a
kind of exultation : ' I '11 tell ye, man ! The deid are
down there — thick like rattons ! '
He turned at once, and, without another word, we
retraced our steps to the house of Aros.
I was eager to be alone with Mary ; yet it was
not till after supper, and then but for a short while,
that I could have a word with her. I lost no time
beating about the bush, but spoke out plainly what
was on my mind.
' Mary,' I said, ' I have not come to Aros without
a hope. If that should prove well founded, we may
all leave and go somewhere else, secure of daily bread
and comfort ; secure, perhaps, of something far be-
yond that, which it would seem extravagant in me
to promise. But there 's a hope that lies nearer to
my heart than money.' And at that I paused.
'You can guess fine what that is, Mary,' I said.
She looked away from me in silence, and that was
small encouragement, but I was not to be put off.
' All my days I have thought the world of you,' I
continued ; ' the time goes on and 1 think always the
more of you; I could not think to be happy or hearty
132
WHAT THE WRECK BROUGHT
in my life without you : you are the apple of niy
eye.' Still she looked away, and said never a word ;
but I thought I saw that her hands shook. ' Mary,'
I cried in fear, ' do ye no' like me ? '
' Oh, Charlie man,' she said, ' is this a time to speak
of it ? Let me be a while ; let me be the way I am ;
it 11 not be you that loses by the waiting ! '
I made out by her voice that she was nearly weep-
ing, and this put me out of any thought but to
compose her. ' Mary Ellen,' I said, ' say no more ;
I did not come to trouble you : your way shall be
mine, and your time too ; and you have told me all
I wanted. Only just this one thing more : what ails
you?'
She owned it was her father, but would enter into
no particulars, only shook her head, and said he was
not well and not like himself, and it was a great pity.
She knew nothing of the wreck. ' I havena been
near it,' said she. ' What for would I go near it,
Charlie lad? The poor souls are gone to their
account long syne ; and I would just have wished
they had ta'en their gear with them — poor souls ! '
This was scarcely any great encouragement for me
to tell her of the Espirito Santo ; yet I did so, and
at the very first word she cried out in surprise.
' There was a man at Grisapol,' she said, ' in the
month of May — a little, yellow, black-avised body,
they tell me, with gold rings upon his fingers, and a
beard ; and he was speiring high and low for that
same ship.'
It was towards the end of April that I had been
133
THE MERRY MEN
given these papers to sort out by Dr. Robertson :
and it came suddenly back upon my mind that they
were thus prepared for a Spanish historian, or a man
calling himself such, who had come with high recom-
mendations to the Principal, on a mission of inquiry
as to the dispersion of the great Armada. Putting
one thing with another, I fancied that the visitor
' with the gold rings upon his fingers ' might be the
same with Dr. Robertson's historian from Madrid.
If that were so, he would be more likely after
treasure for himself than information for a learned
society. I made up my mind I should lose no time
over my undertaking ; and if the ship lay sunk in
Sandag Bay, as perhaps both he and I supposed, it
should not be for the advantage of this ringed adven-
turer, but for Mary and myself, and for the good,
old, honest, kindly family of the Darnaways.
CHAPTER III
LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY
I was early afoot next morning ; and as soon as I
had a bite to eat, set forth upon a tour of explora-
tion. Something in my heart distinctly told me that
I should find the ship of the Armada ; and although
I did not give Avay entirely to such hopeful thoughts,
I was still very light in spirits and walked upon air.
Aros is a very rough islet, its surface strewn with
great rocks and shaggy with fern and heather ; and
134
IN SAND AG BAY
my way lay almost north and south across the highest
knoll ; and though the whole distance was inside of
two miles, it took more time and exertion than four
upon a level road. Upon the summit, I paused.
Although not very high — not three hundred feet, as
I think — it yet outtops all the neighbouring lowlands
of the Ross, and commands a great view of sea and
islands. The sun, which had been up some time,
was already hot upon my neck ; the air was listless
and thundery, although purely clear ; away over the
north-west, where the isles lie thickliest congregated,
some half a dozen small and ragged clouds hung
together in a covey ; and the head of Ben Kyaw
wore, not merely a few streamers, but a solid hood
of vapour. There was a threat in the weather. The
sea, it is true, was smooth like glass : even the Roost
was but a seam on that wide mirror, and the Merry
Men no more than caps of foam ; but to my eye and
ear, so long familiar with these places, the sea also
seemed to lie uneasily ; a sound of it, like a long
sigh, mounted to me where I stood ; and, quiet as it
was, the Roost itself appeared to be revolving mis-
chief. For I ought to say that all we dwellers in
these parts attributed, if not prescience, at least a
quality of warning, to that strange and dangerous
creature of the tides.
I hurried on, then, with the greater speed, and had
soon descended the slope of Aros to the part that we
call Sandag Bay. It is a pretty large piece of water
compared with the size of the isle ; well sheltered
from all but the prevailing wind ; sandy and shoal
135
THE MERRY MEN
and bounded by low sand-hills to the west, but to
the eastward lying several fathoms deep along a ledge
of rocks. It is upon that side that, at a certain time
each flood, the current mentioned by my uncle sets
so strong into the bay ; a little later, when the Roost
begins to work higher, an undertow runs still more
strongly in the reverse direction ; and it is the action
of this last, as I suppose, that has scoured that part
so deep. Nothing is to be seen out of Sandag Bay
but one small segment of the horizon and, in heavy
weather, the breakers flying high over a deep-sea
reef.
From half-way down the hill I had perceived the
wreck of February last, a brig of considerable ton-
nage, lying, with her back broken, high and dry on
the east corner of the sands ; and I was making
directly towards it, and already almost on the margin
of the turf, when my eyes were suddenly arrested by
a spot, cleared of fern and heather, and marked by
one of those long, low, and almost human-looking
mounds that we see so commonly in graveyards. I
stopped like a man shot. Nothing had been said to
me of any dead man or interment on the island ;
Rorie, Mary, and my uncle had all equally held their
peace ; of her at least, I was certain that she must
be ignorant ; and yet here, before my eyes, was proof
indubitable of the fact. Here was a grave; and I
had to ask myself, with a chill, what manner of man
lay there in his last sleep, awaiting the signal of the
Lord in that solitary, sea-beat resting-place ? My
mind supplied no answer but what I feared to enter-
136
IN SAND AG BAY
tain. Shipwrecked, at least, he must have been ;
perhaps, like the old Armada mariners, from some
far and rich land over-sea ; or perhaps one of my own
race, perishing within eyesight of the smoke of home.
I stood a while uncovered by his side, and I could
have desired that it had lain in our religion to put
up some prayer for that unhappy stranger, or, in the
old classic way, outwardly to honour his misfortune.
I knew, although his bones lay there, a part of Aros,
till the trumpet sounded, his imperishable soul was
forth and far away, among the raptures of the ever-
lasting Sabbath or the pangs of hell ; and yet my
mind misgave me even with a fear, that perhaps he
was near me where I stood, guarding his sepulchre,
and lingering on the scene of his unhappy fate.
Certainly it was with a spirit somewhat over-
shadowed that I turned away from the grave to the
hardly less melancholy spectacle of the wreck. Her
stem was above the first arc of the flood ; she was
broken in two a little abaft the foremast — though
indeed she had none, both masts having broken short
in her disaster ; and as the pitch of the beach was
very sharp and sudden, and the bows lay many feet
below the stern, the fracture gaped widely open, and
you could see right through her poor hull upon the
farther side. Her name was much defaced, and I
could not make out clearly whether she was called
Christiania, after the Norwegian city, or Christiana,
after the good woman, Christian's wife, in that old
book the Pilgrim's Progress. By her build she was
a foreign ship, but I was not certain of her nation -
137
THE MERRY MEN
ality. She had been painted green, but the colour
was faded and weathered, and the paint peeling off
in strips. The wreck of the mainmast lay alongside,
half-buried in sand. She was a forlorn sight, indeed,
and I could not look without emotion at the bits of
rope that still hung about her, so often handled of
yore by shouting seamen ; or the little scuttle where
they had passed up and down to their affairs ; or that
poor noseless angel of a figure-head that had dipped
into so many running billows.
I do not know whether it came most from the ship
or from the grave, but I fell into some melancholy
scruples, as I stood there, leaning with one hand
against the battered timbers. The homelessness of
men, and even of inanimate vessels, cast away upon
strange shores, came strongly in upon my mind. To
make a profit of such pitiful misadventures seemed
an unmanly and a sordid act; and I began to think
of my then quest as of something sacrilegious in its
nature. But when I remembered Mary I took heart
again. My uncle would never consent to an impru-
dent marriage, nor would she, as I was persuaded,
wed without his full approval. It behoved me, then,
to be up and doing for my wife ; and I thought with
a laugh how long it was since that great sea-castle,
the Espirito Santo, had left her bones in Sandag
Bay, and how weak it would be to consider rights so
long extinguished and misfortunes so long forgotten
in the process of time.
I had my theory of where to seek for her remains.
The set of the current and the soundings both pointed
138
IN SANDAG BAY
to the east side of the bay under the ledge of rocks.
If she had been lost in Sandag Bay, and if, after
these centuries, any portion of her held together, it
was there that I should find it. The water deepens,
as I have said, with great rapidity, and even close
alongside the rocks several fathoms may be found.
As I walked upon the edge I could see far and wide
over the sandy bottom of the bay ; the sun shone
clear and green and steady in the deeps ; the bay
seemed rather like a great transparent crystal, as one
sees them in a lapidary's shop ; there was naught to
show that it was water but an internal trembling, a
hovering within of sun-glints and netted shadows,
and now and then a faint lap and a dying bubble
round the edge. The shadows of the rocks lay out
for some distance at their feet, so that my own
shadow, moving, pausing, and stooping on the top
of that, reached sometimes half across the bay. It
was above all in this belt of shadows that I hunted
for the Espirito Santo ; since it was there the under-
tow ran strongest, whether in or out. Cool as the
whole water seemed this broiling day, it looked, in
that part, yet cooler, and had a mysterious invitation
for the eyes. Peer as I pleased, however, I could
see nothing but a few fishes or a bush of sea-tangle,
and here and there a lump of rock that had fallen
from above and now lay separate on the sandy floor.
Twice did I pass from one end to the other of the
rocks, and in the whole distance I could see nothing
of the wreck, nor any place but one where it was
possible for it to be. This was a large terrace in five
139
THE MERRY MEN
fathoms of water, raised off the surface of the sand
to a considerable height, and looking from above like
a mere outgrowth of the rocks on which I walked.
It was one mass of great sea-tangles like a grove,
which prevented me judging of its nature, but in
shape and size it bore some likeness to a vessel's hull.
At least it was my best chance. If the Espirito
Santo lay not there under the tangles, it lay nowhere
at all in Sandag Bay ; and I prepared to put the
question to the proof, once and for all, and either go
back to Aros a rich man or cured for ever of my
dreams of wealth.
I stripped to the skin, and stood on the extreme
margin with my hands clasped, irresolute. The bay
at that time was utterly quiet ; there was no sound
but from a school of porpoises somewhere out of
sight behind the point ; yet a certain fear withheld
me on the threshold of my venture. Sad sea-feelings,
scraps of my uncles superstitions, thoughts of the
dead, of the grave, of the old broken ships, drifted
through my mind. But the strong sun upon my
shoulders warmed me to the heart, and I stooped
forward and plunged into the sea.
It was all that I could do to catch a trail of the
sea- tangle that grew so thickly on the terrace ; but
once so far anchored I secured myself by grasping a
whole armful of these thick and slimy stalks, and,
planting my feet against the edge, I looked around
me. On all sides the clear sand stretched forth un-
broken ; it came to the foot of the rocks, scoured into
the likeness of an alley in a garden by the action of
140
IN SANDAG BAY
the tides ; and before me, for as far as I could see,
nothing was visible but the same many-folded sand
upon the sun-bright bottom of the bay. Yet the
terrace to which I was then holding was as thick
with strong sea-growths as a tuft of heather, and the
cliff from which it bulged hung draped below the
water-line with brown lianas. In this complexity of
forms, all swaying together in the current, things
were hard to be distinguished ; and I was still un-
certain whether my feet were pressed upon the
natural rock or upon the timbers of the Armada
treasure-ship, when the whole tuft of tangle came
away in my hand, and in an instant I was on the
surface, and the shores of the bay and the bright
water swam before my eyes in a glory of crimson.
I clambered back upon the rocks, and threw the
plant of tangle at my feet. Something at the same
moment rang sharply, like a falling coin. I stooped,
and there, sure enough, crusted with the red rust,
there lay an iron shoe-buckle. The sight of this
poor human relic thrilled me to the heart, but not
with hope nor fear, only with a desolate melancholy.
I held it in my hand, and the thought of its owner
appeared before me like the presence of an actual
man. His weather-beaten face, his sailor's hands,
his sea-voice hoarse with singing at the capstan, the
very foot that had once worn that buckle and trod
so much along the swerving decks — the whole
human fact of him, as a creature like myself, with
hair and blood and seeing eyes, haunted me in that
sunny, solitary place, not like a spectre, but like
141
THE MERRY MEN
some friend whom I had basely injured. Was the
great treasure-ship indeed below there, with her guns
and chain and treasure, as she had sailed from Spain ;
her decks a garden for the seaweed, her cabin a
breeding-place for fish, soundless but for the dredg-
ing water, motionless but for the waving of the
tangle upon her battlements — that old, populous,
sea-riding castle, now a reef in Sandag Bay ? Or,
as I thought it likelier, was this a waif from the
disaster of the foreign brig — was this shoe-buckle
bought but the other day and worn by a man of
my own period in the world's history, hearing the
same news from day to day, thinking the same
thoughts, praying, perhaps, in the same temple with
myself? However it was, I was assailed with dreary
thoughts ; my uncle's words, ' the dead are down
there,' echoed in my ears ; and though I determined
to dive once more, it was with a strong repugnance
that I stepped forward to the margin of the rocks.
A great change passed at that moment over the
appearance of the bay. It was no more that clear,
visible interior, like a house roofed with glass, where
the green, submarine sunshine slept so stilly. A
breeze, I suppose, had flawed the surface, and a sort
of trouble and blackness filled its bosom, where
flashes of light and clouds of shadow tossed con-
fusedly together. Even the terrace below obscurely
rocked and quivered. It seemed a graver thing to
venture on this place of ambushes ; and when I
leaped into the sea the second time it was with a
quaking in my soul.
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IN SANDAG BAY
I secured myself as at first, and groped among the
waving tangle. All that met my touch was cold and
soft and gluey. The thicket was alive with crabs
and lobsters, trundling to and fro lopsidedly, and I
had to harden my heart against the horror of their
carrion neighbourhood. On all sides I could feel
the grain and the clefts of hard, living stone ; no
planks, no iron, not a sign of any wreck ; the Espirito
Santo was not there. I remember I had almost a
sense of relief in my disappointment, and I was
about ready to leave go, when something happened
that sent me to the surface with my heart in my
mouth. I had already stayed somewhat late over
my explorations ; the current was freshening with
the change of the tide, and Sandag Bay was no
longer a safe place for a single swimmer. Well, just
at the last moment there came a sudden flush of
current, dredging through the tangles like a wave.
I lost one hold, was flung sprawling on my side, and,
instinctively grasping for a fresh support, my fingers
closed on something hard and cold. I think I knew
at that moment what it was. At least I instantly
left hold of the tangle, leaped for the surface, and
clambered out next moment on the friendly rocks
with the bone of a man's leg in my grasp.
Mankind is a material creature, slow to think and
dull to perceive connections. The grave, the wreck
of the brig, and the rusty shoe-buckle were surely
plain advertisements. A child might have read
their dismal story, and yet it was not until I touched
that actual piece of mankind that the full horror of
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THE MERRY MEN
the charnel ocean burst upon my spirit. I laid the
bone beside the buckle, picked up my clothes, and
ran as I was along the rocks towards the human
shore. I could not be far enough from the spot ; no
fortune was vast enough to tempt me back again.
The bones of the drowned dead should henceforth
roll undisturbed by me, whether on tangle or minted
gold. But as soon as I trod the good earth again,
and had covered my nakedness against the sun, I
knelt down over against the ruins of the brig, and
out of the fulness of my heart prayed long and
passionately for all poor souls upon the sea. A
generous prayer is never presented in vain ; the
petition may be refused, but the petitioner is always,
I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation.
The horror, at least, was lifted from my mind ; I
could look with calm of spirit on that great bright
creature, God's ocean ; and as I set off homeward
up the rough sides of Aros, nothing remained of my
concern beyond a deep determination to meddle no
more with the spoils of wrecked vessels or the
treasures of the dead.
I was already some way up the hill before I
paused to breathe and look behind me. The sight
that met my eyes was doubly strange.
For, first, the storm that I had foreseen was now
advancing with almost tropical rapidity. The whole
surface of the sea had been dulled from its con-
spicuous brightness to an ugly hue of corrugated
lead ; already in the distance the white waves, the
' skipper's daughters,' had begun to flee before a
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IN SANDAG HAY
breeze that was still insensible on Aros ; unci already
along- tbe curve of Sandag Bay there was a splashing
run of sea that I could hear from where I stood.
The change upon the sky was even more remarkable.
There had begun to arise out of the south-west a
huge and solid continent of scowling cloud ; here
and there, through rents in its contexture, the sun
still poured a sheaf of spreading rays ; and here and
there, from all its edges, vast inky streamers lay
forth along the yet unclouded sky. The menace
was express and imminent. Even as I gazed, the
sun was blotted out. At any moment the tempest
might fall upon Aros in its might.
The suddenness of this change of weather so fixed
my eyes on heaven that it was some seconds before
they alighted on the bay, mapped out below my feet,
and robbed a moment later of the sun. The knoll
which I had just surmounted overflanked a little
amphitheatre of lower hillocks sloping towards the
sea, and beyond that the yellow arc of beach and
the whole extent of Sandag Bay. It was a scene on
which I had often looked down, but where I had
never before beheld a human figure. I had but just
turned my back upon it and left it empty, and my
wonder may be fancied when I saw a boat and
several men in that deserted spot. The boat was
lying by the rocks. A pair of fellows, bareheaded,
with their sleeves rolled up, and one with a boat-
hook, kept her with difficulty to her moorings, for
the current was growing brisker every moment. A
little way off upon the ledge two men in black
8— k 145
THE MERRY MEN
clothes, whom I judged to be superior in rank, laid
their heads together over some task which at first I
did not understand, but a second after I had made it
out — they were taking bearings with the compass ;
and just then I saw one of them unroll a sheet of
paper and lay his finger down, as though identifying
features in a map. Meanwhile a third was walking
to and fro, poking among the rocks and peering over
the edge into the water. While I was still watch-
ing them with the stupefaction of surprise, my mind
hardly yet able to work on what my eyes reported,
this third person suddenly stooped and summoned
his companions with a cry so loud that it reached
my ears upon the hill. The others ran to him, even
dropping the compass in their hurry, and I could see
the bone and the shoe-buckle going from hand to
hand, causing the most unusual gesticulations of
surprise and interest. Just then I could hear the
seamen crying from the boat, and saw them point
westward to that cloud continent which was ever
the more rapidly unfurling its blackness over heaven.
The others seemed to consult ; but the danger was
too pressing to be braved, and they bundled into
the boat carrying my relics with them, and set forth
out of the bay with all speed of oars.
I made no more ado about the matter, but turned
and ran for the house. Whoever these men were, it
was fit my uncle should be instantly informed. It
was not then altogether too late in the day for
a descent of the Jacobites ; and maybe Prince
Charlie, whom I knew my uncle to detest, was one
146
IN SANDAG BAY
of the three superiors whom I had seen upon the
roek. Yet as I ran, leaping from rock to roek, and
turned the matter loosely in my mind, this theory
grew ever the longer the less welcome to my reason.
The compass, the map, the interest awakened by
the buckle, and the conduct of that one among the
strangers who had looked so often below him in the
water, all seemed to point to a different explanation
of their presence on that outlying, obscure islet of the
western sea. The Madrid historian, the search insti-
tuted by Dr. Robertson, the bearded stranger with
the rings, my own fruitless search that very morning
in the deep water of Sandag Bay, ran together,
piece by piece, in my memory, and I made sure that
these strangers must be Spaniards in quest of ancient
treasure and the lost ship of the Armada. But the
people living in outlying islands, such as Aros, are
answerable for their own security ; there is none
near by to protect or even to help them ; and the
presence in such a spot of a crew of foreign ad-
venturers — poor, greedy, and most likely lawless —
rilled me with apprehensions for my uncle's money,
and even for the safety of his daughter. I was still
wondering how we were to get rid of them when I
came, all breathless, to the top of Aros. The whole
world was shadowed over ; only in the extreme east,
on a hill of the mainland, one last gleam of sunshine
lingered like a jewel ; rain had begun to fall, not
heavily, but in great drops ; the sea was rising with
each moment, and already a band of white encircled
Aros and the nearer coasts of Grisapol. The boat
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THE MERRY MEN
was still pulling seaward, but I now became aware
of what had been hidden from me lower down — a
large, heavily-sparred, handsome schooner, lying-to
at the south end of Aros. Since I had not seen her
in the morning when I had looked around so closely
at the signs of the weather, and upon these lone
waters where a sail was rarely visible, it was clear
she must have lain last night behind the uninhabited
Eilean Gour, and this proved conclusively that she
was manned by strangers to our coast, for that
anchorage, though good enough to look at, is little
better than a trap for ships. With such ignorant
sailors upon so wild a coast, the coming gale was
not unlikely to bring death upon its wings.
CHAPTER IV
THE GALE
1 found my uncle at the gable-end, watching the
signs of the weather, with a pipe in his fingers.
' Uncle,' said I, ' there were men ashore at Sandag
13ay '
L had no time to go further ; indeed, I not only
forgot my words, but even my weariness, so strange
was the effect on Uncle Gordon. He dropped his
pipe and fell back against the end of the house with
his jaw fallen, his eyes staring, and his long face as
white as paper. We must have looked at one
another silently for a quarter of a minute, before he
148
THE GALE
made answer in this extraordinary fashion : ' Had he
a hair kep on ? '
I knew as well as if I had been there that the
man who now lay buried at Sandag had worn a
hairy cap, and that he had come ashore alive. For
the first and only time I lost toleration for the man
who was my benefactor and the father of the woman
I hoped to call my wife.
' These were living men,' said I, ' perhaps Jacob-
ites, perhaps the French, perhaps pirates, perhaps
adventurers come here to seek the Spanish treasure-
ship ; but, whatever they may be, dangerous at least
to your daughter and my cousin. As for your own
guilty terrors, man, the dead sleeps well where you
have laid him. I stood this morning by his grave ;
he will not wake before the trump of doom.'
My kinsman looked upon me, blinking, while I
spoke ; then he fixed his eyes for a little on the
ground, and pulled his fingers foolishly ; but it was
plain that he was past the power of speech.
' Come,' said I ; ' you must think for others.
You must come up the hill with me and see this
ship.'
He obeyed without a word or a look, following
slowly after my impatient strides. The spring-
seemed to have gone out of his body, and he
scrambled heavily up and down the rocks, instead
of leaping, as he was wont, from one to another.
Nor could I, for all my cries, induce him to make
better haste. Only once he replied to me com-
plainingly, and like one in bodily pain : ' Ay, ay,
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THE MERRY MEN
man, I 'm coming.' Long before we had reached
the top I had no other thought for him but pity.
If the crime had been monstrous, the punishment
was in proportion.
At last we emerged above the sky-line of the hill,
and could see around us. All was black and stormy
to the eye ; the last gleam of sun had vanished ; a
wind had sprung up, not yet high, but gusty and
unsteady to the point ; the rain, on the other hand,
had ceased. Short as was the interval, the sea
already ran vastly higher than when I had stood
there last ; already it had begun to break over some
of the outward reefs, and already it moaned aloud
in the sea-caves of Aros. I looked, at first, in vain
for the schooner.
' There she is,' I said at last. But her new posi-
tion, and the course she was now lying, puzzled me.
' They cannot mean to beat to sea,' I cried.
' That 's what they mean,' said my uncle, with
something like joy ; and just then the schooner went
about and stood upon another tack, which put
the question beyond the reach of doubt. These
strangers, seeing a gale on hand, had thought first
of sea-room. With the wind that threatened, in
these reef-sown waters and contending against so
violent a stream of tide, their course was certain
death.
' Good God ! ' said I, ' they are all lost'
'Ay,' returned my uncle, 'a' — a' lost. They
hadna a chance but to rin for Kyle Dona. The gate
they 're gaun the noo, they couldna win through
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THE GALE
an the muckle deil were there to pilot them. Eh,
man,' he continued, touching me on the sleeve,
' it 's a braw nicht for a shipwreck ! Twa in ae
twalmonth ! Eh, but the Merry Men '11 dance
bonny ! '
I looked at him, and it was then that I began to
fancy him no longer in his right mind. He was
peering up to me, as if for sympathy, a timid joy
in his eyes. All that had passed between us was
already forgotten in the prospect of this fresh
disaster.
' If it were not too late,' I cried with indigna-
tion, ' I would take the coble and go out to warn
them.'
' Na, na,' he protested, ' ye maunna interfere ; ye
maunna meddle wi' the like o' that. It 's His ' —
doffing his bonnet — ' His wull. And, eh, man ! but
it 's a braw nicht for 't ! '
Something like fear began to creep into my soul ;
and, reminding him that I had not yet dined, I pro-
posed we should return to the house. But no ;
nothing would tear him from his place of outlook.
'I maun see the hail thing, man, Cherlie,' he
explained ; and then as the schooner went about a
second time, ' Eh, but they han'le her bonny ! ' he
cried. ' The Christ-Anna was naething to this.'
Already the men on board the schooner must
have begun to realise some part, but not yet the
twentieth, of the dangers that environed their
doomed ship. At every lull of the capricious wind
they must have seen how fast the current swept
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THE MERRY MEN
them back. Each tack was made shorter, as they
saw how little it prevailed. Every moment the
rising swell began to boom and foam upon another
sunken reef; and ever and again a breaker would fall
in sounding ruin under the very bows of her, and
the brown reef and streaming tangle appear in the
hollow of the wave. I tell you, they had to stand
to their tackle : there was no idle man aboard that
ship, God knows. It was upon the progress of a
scene so horrible to any human-hearted man that
my misguided uncle now pored and gloated like a
connoisseur. As I turned to go down the hill, he
was lying on his belly on the summit, with his hands
stretched forth and clutching in the heather. He
seemed rejuvenated, mind and body.
When I got back to the house already dismally
affected, I was still more sadly downcast at the
sight of Mary. She had her sleeves rolled up over
her strong arms, and was quietly making bread. I
got a bannock from the dresser and sat down to eat
it in silence.
' Are ye wearied, lad ? ' she asked after a while.
' I am not so much wearied, Mary,' I replied,
getting on my feet, ' as I am weary of delay, and
perhaps of Aros too. You know me well enough to
judge me fairly, say what I like. AYell, Mary, you
may be sure of this : you had better be anywhere
but here.'
' I '11 be sure of one thing,' she returned : * I '11 be
where my duty is.'
' You forget, you have a duty to yourself,' I said.
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THE GALE
' Ay, man,' she replied, pounding at the dough ;
' will you have found that in the Bible, now ? '
' Mary/ I said solemnly, ' you must not laugh at
me just now. God knows I am in no heart for
laughing. If we could get your father with us,
it would be best ; but with him or without him,
I want you far away from here, my girl ; for your
own sake, and for mine, ay, and for your father's
too, I want you far — far away from here. I came
with other thoughts ; I came here as a man comes
home ; now it is all changed, and I have no desire
nor hope but to flee — for that's the word — flee, like
a bird out of the fowler's snare, from this accursed
island.'
She had stopped her work by this time.
' And do you think, now,' said she, ' do you think,
now, I have neither eyes nor ears ? Do ye think I
havena broken my heart to have these braws (as he
calls them, God forgive him !) thrown into the sea ?
Do ye think I have lived with him, day in, day out,
and not seen what you saw in an hour or two ? No,'
she said, ' 1 know there 's wrong in it ; what wrong,
I neither know nor want to know. There was
never an ill thing made better by meddling, that I
could hear of. But, my lad, you must never ask me
to leave my father. While the breath is in his body
1 11 be with him. And he 's not long for here,
either : that I can tell you, Charlie — he 's not long
for here. The mark is on his brow ; and better so
— maybe better so.'
I was a while silent, not knowing what to say ;
153
THE MERRY MEN
and when I roused my head at last to speak, she got
before me.
'Charlie,' she said, 'what's right for me needna
be right for you. There 's sin upon this house and
trouble ; you are a stranger ; take your things upon
your back and go your ways to better places and to
better folk, and if you were ever minded to come
back, though it were twenty years syne, you would
find me aye waiting.'
' Mary Ellen,' I said, ' I asked you to be my wife,
and you said as good as yes. That 's done for good.
Wherever you are, I am ; as I shall answer to
my God.'
As I said the words the wind suddenly burst out
raving, and then seemed to stand still and shudder
round the house of Aros. It was the first squall, or
prologue, of the coming tempest, and as we started
and looked about us, we found that a gloom, like
the approach of evening, had settled round the
house.
' God pity all poor folks at sea ! ' she said.
' We '11 see no more of my father till the morrow's
morning.'
And then she told me, as we sat by the fire and
hearkened to the rising gusts, of how this change
had fallen upon my uncle. All last winter he had
been dark and fitful in his mind. Whenever the
Roost ran high, or, as Mary said, whenever the
Merry Men Avere dancing, he would lie out for
hours together on the Head, if it were night, or on
the top of Aros by day, watching the tumult of the
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THE GALE
sea, and sweeping the horizon for a sail. After
February the 10th, when the wealth-bringing wreck
was cast ashore at Sandag, he had been at first
unnaturally gay, and his excitement had never fallen
in degree, but only changed in kind from dark to
darker. He neglected his work, and kept Rorie idle.
They two would speak together by the hour at the
gable-end, in guarded tones and with an air of
secrecy, and almost of guilt ; and if she questioned
either, as at first she sometimes did, her inquiries
were put aside with confusion. Since Rorie had
first remarked the fish that hung about the ferry,
his master had never set foot but once upon the
mainland of the Ross. That once — it was in the
height of the springs — he had passed dryshod while
the tide was out ; but, having lingered over-long on
the far side, found himself cut off from Aros by the
returning waters. It was with a shriek of agony
that he had leaped across the gut, *and he had
reached home thereafter in a fever-fit of fear. A
fear of the sea, a constant haunting thought of the
sea, appeared in his talk and devotions, and even in
his looks when he was silent.
Rorie alone came in to supper ; but a little later
my uncle appeared, took a bottle under his arm, put
some bread in his pocket, and set forth again to his
outlook, followed this time by Rorie. I heard that
the schooner was losing ground, but the crew were
still fighting every inch with hopeless ingenuity and
courage ; and the news filled my mind with black-
ness.
155
THE MERRY MEN
A little after sundown the full fury of the gale
broke forth, such a gale as I have never seen in
summer, nor, seeing how swiftly it had come, even
in winter. Mary and I sat in silence, the house
quaking overhead, the tempest howling without, the
fire between us sputtering with raindrops. Our
thoughts were far away with the poor fellows on
the schooner, or my not less unhappy uncle, house-
less on the promontory ; and yet ever and again we
were startled back to ourselves, when the wind
would rise and strike the gable like a solid body,
or suddenly fall and draw away, so that the fire
leaped into flame and our hearts bounded in our
sides. Now the storm in its might would seize and
shake the four corners of the roof, roaring like Levi-
athan in anger. Anon, in a lull, cold eddies of
tempest moved shudderingly in the room, lifting
the hair upon our heads and passing between us
as we sat. And again the wind would break forth
in a chorus of melancholy sounds, hooting Ioav in
the chimney, wailing with flutelike softness round
the house.
It was perhaps eight o'clock when Rorie came in
and pulled me mysteriously to the door. My uncle,
it appeared, had frightened even his constant com-
rade ; and Rorie, uneasy at his extravagance, prayed
me to come out and share the watch. I hastened to
do as I was asked ; the more readily as, what with
fear and horror, and the electrical tension of the
night, I was myself restless and disposed for action.
I told Mary to be under no alarm, for I should
156
THE GALE
be a safeguard on her father ; and wrapping myself
warmly in a plaid, I followed Rorie into the open
air.
The night, though we were so little past mid-
summer, was as dark as January. Intervals of a
groping twilight alternated with spells of utter black-
ness ; and it was impossible to trace the reason of
these changes in the flying horror of the sky. The
wind blew the breath out of a man's nostrils ; all
heaven seemed to thunder overhead like one huge
sail ; and when there fell a momentary lull on Aros,
we could hear the gusts dismally sweeping in the
distance. Over all the lowlands of the Ross the
wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea ;
and God only knows the uproar that was raging
around the head of Ben Kyaw. Sheets of mingled
spray and rain were driven in our faces. All round
the isle of Aros, the surf, with an incessant, hammer-
ing thunder, beat upon the reefs and beaches. Now
louder in one place, now lower in another, like the
combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass
of sound was hardly varied for a moment. And loud
above all this hurly-burly I could hear the changeful
voices of the Roost and the intermittent roaring of
the Merry Men. At that hour there flashed into
my mind the reason of the name that they were
called. For the noise of them seemed almost mirth-
ful, as it out-topped the other noises of the night ;
or if not mirthful, yet instinct with a portentous
joviality. Nay, and it seemed even human. As
when savage men have drunk away their reason, and,
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THE MERRY MEN
discarding speech, bawl together in their madness
by the hour ; so, to my ears, these deadly breakers
shouted by Aros in the night.
Arm in arm, and staggering against the wind,
Rorie and I won every yard of ground with conscious
effort. We slipped on the wet sod, we fell together
sprawling on the rocks. Bruised, drenched, beaten,
and breathless, it must have taken us near half an
hour to get from the house down to the Head that
overlooks the Roost. There, it seemed, was my
uncle's favourite observatory. Right in the face of
it, where the cliff is highest and most sheer, a hump
of earth, like a parapet, makes a place of shelter from
the common winds, where a man may sit in quiet and
see the tide and the mad billows contending at his
feet. As he might look down from the window of a
house upon some street disturbance, so, from this
post, he looks down upon the tumbling of the Merry
Men. On such a night, of course, he peers upon a
world of blackness, where the waters wheel and boil,
where the waves joust together with the noise of an
explosion, and the foam towers and vanishes in the
twinkling of an eye. Never before had I seen the
Merry Men thus violent. The fury, height, and
transiency of their spoutings was a thing to be seen
and not recounted. High over our heads on the
cliff rose their white columns in the darkness ; and
the same instant, like phantoms, they were gone.
Sometimes three at a time would thus aspire and
vanish ; sometimes a gust took them, and the spray
would fall about us, heavy as a wave. And yet the
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THE GALE
spectacle was rather maddening in its levity than
impressive by its force. Thought was beaten down
by the confounding uproar ; a gleeful vacancy pos-
sessed the brains of men, a state akin to madness ;
and I found myself at times following the dance of
the Merry Men as it were a tune upon a jigging
instrument.
I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still
some yards away in one of the flying glimpses of
twilight that chequered the pitch darkness of the
night. He was standing up behind the parapet, his
head thrown back and the bottle to his mouth. As
he put it down, he saw and recognised us with a toss
of one hand fleeringly above his head.
' Has he been drinking ? ' shouted I to Rorie.
' He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws,'
returned Rorie in the same high key, and it was
all that I could do to hear him.
' Then — was he so — in February ? ' I inquired.
Rorie's ' Ay ' was a cause of joy to me. The
murder, then, had not sprung in cold blood from
calculation ; it was an act of madness no more to
be condemned than to be pardoned. My uncle was
a dangerous madman, if you will, but he was not
cruel and base as I had feared. Yet what a scene
for a carouse, what an incredible vice, was this that
the poor man had chosen ! I have always thought
drunkenness a wild and almost fearful pleasure, rather
demoniacal than human ; but drunkenness, out here
in the roaring blackness, on the edge of a cliff above
that hell of waters, the man's head spinning like the
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THE MERRY MEN
Roost, his foot tottering on the edge of death, his
ear watching for the signs of shipwreck, surely that,
if it were credible in any one, was morally impossible
in a man like my uncle, whose mind was set upon
a damnatory creed and haunted by the darkest super-
stitions. Yet so it was ; and, as we reached the
bight of shelter and could breathe again, I saw
the man's eyes shining in the night with an unholy
glimmer.
' Eh, Charlie man, it 's grand ! ' he cried. ' See
to them ! ' he continued, dragging me to the edge of
the abyss from whence arose that deafening clamour
and those clouds of spray ; ' see to them dancin',
man ! Is that no wicked ? '
He pronounced the word with gusto, and I thought
it suited with the scene.
' They 're yowlin' for thon schooner,' he went on,
his thin, insane voice clearly audible in the shelter of
the bank, ' an' she 's comin' aye nearer, aye nearer,
aye nearer an' nearer an' nearer ; an' they ken't, the
folk kens it, they ken weel it 's by wi' them. Charlie
lad, they 're a' drunk in yon schooner, a' dozened wi'
drink. They were a' drunk in the Christ-Anna at
the hinder end. There 's nane could droon at sea
wantin' the brandy. Hoot awa, what do you ken ? '
with a sudden blast of anger. ' I tell ye, it canna
be ; they daurna droon withoot it. Hae,' holding
out the bottle, ' tak' a sowp.'
I was about to refuse, but Rorie touched me as if
in warning ; and indeed I had already thought better
of the movement. I took the bottle, therefore, and
1 60
THE GALE
not only drank freely myself, but contrived to spill
even more as I was doing so. It was pure spirit, and
almost strangled me to swallow. My kinsman did
not observe the loss, but, once more throwing back
his head, drained the remainder to the dregs. Then,
with a loud laugh, he cast the bottle forth among the
Merry Men, who seemed to leap up, shouting to
receive it.
' Hae, bairns ! ' he cried, ' there 's your hansel.
Ye '11 get bonnier nor that or morning. '
Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not
two hundred yards away, we heard, at a moment
when the wind was silent, the clear note of a human
voice. Instantly the wind swept howling down upon
the Head, and the Roost bellowed, and churned, and
danced with a new fury. But we had heard the
sound, and we knew, with agony, that this was the
doomed ship now close on ruin, and that what we
had heard was the voice of her master issuing his
last command. Crouching together on the edge, we
waited, straining every sense, for the inevitable end.
It was long, however, and to us it seemed like ages,
ere the schooner suddenly appeared for one brief
instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering foam.
I still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the
boom fell heavily across the deck ; I still see the
black outline of the hull, and still think I can dis-
tinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the tiller.
Yet the whole sight we had of her passed swifter
than lightning ; the very wave that disclosed her
fell burying her for ever ; the mingled cry of many
8— l 161
THE MERRY MEN
voices at the point of death rose and was quenched
in the roaring of the Merry Men. And with that
the tragedy was at an end. The strong ship, with
all her gear, and the lamp perhaps still burning in
the cabin, the lives of so many men, precious surely
to others, dear, at least, as heaven to themselves,
had all, in that one moment, gone down into the
surging waters. They were gone like a dream. And
the wind still ran and shouted, and the senseless
waters in the Roost still leaped and tumbled as
before.
How long we lay there together, we three, speech-
less and motionless, is more than I can tell, but it
must have been for long. At length, one by one, and
almost mechanically, we crawled back into the shelter
of the bank. As I lay against the parapet, wholly
wretched and not entirely master of my mind, I
could hear my kinsman maundering to himself in an
altered and melancholy mood. Now he would repeat
to himself with maudlin iteration, ' Sic a fecht as
they had — sic a sair fecht as they had, puir lads,
puir lads ! ' and anon he would bewail that ' a' the
gear was as gude 's tint,' because the ship had gone
down among the Merry Men instead of stranding on
the shore ; and throughout, the name — the Christ-
Anna — would come and go in his divagations, pro-
nounced with shuddering awe. The storm all this
time was rapidly abating. In half an hour the wind
had fallen to a breeze, and the change was ac-
companied or caused by a heavy, cold, and plumping
rain. I must then have fallen asleep, and when I
162
THE GALE
came to myself, drenched, stiff, and un refreshed, day
had already broken — grey, wet, discomfortable day ;
the wind blew in faint and shifting capfuls, the tide
was out, the Roost was at its lowest, and only the
strong beating surf round all the coasts of Aros
remained to witness of the furies of the night.
CHAPTER V
A MAN OUT OF THE SEA
Rorie set out for the house in search of warmth and
breakfast ; but my uncle was bent upon examining
the shores of Aros, and I felt it a part of duty to
accompany him throughout. He was now docile and
quiet, but tremulous and weak in mind and body ;
and it Avas with the eagerness of a child that he
pursued his exploration. He climbed far down upon
the rocks ; on the beaches he pursued the retreating
breakers. The merest broken plank or rag of cord-
age was a treasure in his eyes to be secured at the
peril of his life. To see him, with weak and stumb-
ling footsteps, expose himself to the pursuit of the
surf, or the snares and pitfalls of the weedy rock,
kept me in a perpetual terror. My arm was ready to
support him, my hand clutched him by the skirt,
I helped him to draw his pitiful discoveries beyond
the reach of the returning wave ; a nurse accompany-
ing a child of seven would have had no different
experience.
Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his
163
THE MERRY MEN
madness of the night before, the passions that
smouldered in his nature were those of a strong
man. His terror of the sea, although conquered for
the moment, was still undiminished ; had the sea
been a lake of living flames he could not have
shrunk more panically from its touch ; and once
when his foot slipped and he plunged to the midleg
into a pool of water, the shriek that came up out of
his soul was like the cry of death. He sat still for a
while, panting like a dog, after that ; but his desire
for the spoils of shipwreck triumphed once more over
his fears ; once more he tottered among the curded
foam ; once more he crawled upon the rocks among
the bursting bubbles ; once more his whole heart
seemed to be set on driftwood, fit, if it was fit for
anything, to throw upon the fire. Pleased as he was
with what he found, he still incessantly grumbled at
his ill-fortune.
' Aros,' he said, ' is no' a place for wrecks ava' — no'
ava'. A' the years I 've dwalt here, this ane maks
the second ; and the best o' the gear clean tint ! '
' Uncle,' said I, for we were now on a stretch of
open sand, where there was nothing to divert his
mind, ' I saw you last night, as I never thought to
see you — you were drunk.'
' Na, na,' he said, ' no' as bad as that. I had been
drinking, though. And to tell ye the God's truth,
it 's a thing I canna mend. There 's nae soberer man
than me in my ordnar ; but when I hear the wind
blaw in my lug, it 's my belief that I gang gy te. '
'You are a religious man,' I replied, 'and this is sin.'
164
A MAN OUT OF THE SEA
' Ou,' he returned, ' if it wasna sin, I dinna ken
that I would eare for't. Ye see, man, it's defiance.
There 's a sair spang o' the auld sin o' the warld in
yon sea; it's an unchristian business at the best
o't ; an' whiles when it gets up, an' the wind skreighs
— the wind an' her are a kind of sib, I 'm thinkin' —
an' thae Merry Men, the daft callants, blawin' and
lauchin', and puir souls in the deid-thraws warstlin'
the leelang nicht wi' their bit ships — weel, it comes
ower me like a glamour. I 'm a deil, I ken 't. But
I think naething o' the puir sailor lads ; I 'm wi' the
sea, I 'm just like ane o' her ain Merry Men.'
I thought I should touch him in a joint of his
harness. I turned me towards the sea ; the surf was
running gaily, wave after wave, with their manes
blowing behind them, riding one after another up
the beach, towering, curving, falling one upon another
on the trampled sand. Without, the salt air, the
scared gulls, the widespread army of the sea-chargers,
neighing to each other, as they gathered together to
the assault of Aros ; and close before us, that line
on the flat sands, that, with all their number and
their fury, they might never pass.
'Thus far shalt thou go,' said I, 'and no farther.'
And then I quoted as solemnly as I was able a verse
that I had often before fitted to the chorus of the
breakers : —
But yet the Lord, that is on high,
Is more of might by far
Than noise of many waters is,
Or great sea-billows are.
I6 5
THE MERRY MEN
' Ay,' said my kinsman, ' at the hinder end the
Lord will triumph ; I dinna misdoobt that. But here
on earth, even silly men-folk daur Him to His face.
It is no' wise ; I am no' sayin' that it 's wise ; but
it's the pride of the eye, and it's the lust o' life, an'
it 's the wale o' pleesures.'
I said no more, for we had now begun to cross a
neck of land that lay between us and Sandag ; and 1
withheld my last appeal to the man's better reason
till we should stand upon the spot associated with
his crime. Nor did he pursue the subject ; but he
walked beside me with a firmer step. The call that
I had made upon his mind acted like a stimulant,
and I could see that he had forgotten his search for
worthless jetsam, in a profound, gloomy, and yet
stirring train of thought. In three or four minutes
we had topped the brae and began to go down upon
Sandag. The wreck had been roughly handled by
the sea ; the stem had been spun round and dragged
a little lower down ; and perhaps the stern had been
forced a little higher, for the two parts now lay
entirely separate on the beach. When we came to
the grave I stopped, uncovered my head in the thick
rain, and, looking my kinsman in the face, addressed
him.
'A man,' said I, 'was in God's providence suffered
to escape from mortal dangers ; he was poor, he was
naked, he was wet, he was weary, he was a stranger ;
he had every claim upon the bowels of your com-
passion ; it may be that he was the salt of the earth,
holy, helpful, and kind ; it may be he was a man
1 66
A MAN OUT OF THE SEA
laden with iniquities to whom death was the begin-
ning of torment. I ask you in the sight of Heaven :
Gordon Darnaway, where is the man for whom
Christ died?'
He started visibly at the last words ; but there
came no answer, and his face expressed no feeling
but a vague alarm.
' You were my father's brother,' I continued ; ' you
have taught me to count your house as if it were my
father's house ; and we are both sinful men walking
before the Lord among the sins and dangers of this
life. It is by our evil that God leads us into good ;
we sin, I dare not say by His temptation, but I must
say with His consent ; and to any but the brutish
man his sins are the beginning of wisdom. God
has warned you by this crime ; He warns you still
by the bloody grave between our feet ; and if there
shall follow no repentance, no improvement, no
return to Him, what can we look for but the follow-
ing of some memorable judgment ? '
Even as I spoke the words, the eyes of my uncle
wandered from my face. A change fell upon his
looks that cannot be described ; his features seemed
to dwindle in size, the colour faded from his cheeks,
one hand rose waveringly and pointed over my
shoulder into the distance, and the oft-repeated name
fell once more from his lips : ' The Christ- Anna !'
I turned ; and if I was not appalled to the same
degree, as I return thanks to Heaven that I had not
the cause, I was still startled by the sight that met
my eyes. The form of a man stood upright on the
167
THE MERRY MEN
cabin-hutch of the wrecked ship ; his back was to-
wards us ; he appeared to be scanning the offing with
shaded eyes, and his figure was relieved to its full
height, which was plainly very great, against the sea
and sky. I have said a thousand times that I am
not superstitious ; but at that moment, with my
mind running upon death and sin, the unexplained
appearance of a stranger on that sea-girt, solitary
island filled me with a surprise that bordered close
on terror. It seemed scarce possible that any human
soul should have come ashore alive in such a sea as
had raged last night along the coast of Aros ; and
the only vessel within miles had gone down before
our eyes among the Merry Men. I was assailed with
doubts that made suspense unbearable, and, to put
the matter to the touch at once, stepped forward and
hailed the figure like a ship.
He turned about, and I thought he started to be-
hold us. At this my courage instantly revived, and
I called and signed to him to draw near, and he, on
his part, dropped immediately to the sands, and
began slowly to approach, with many stops and
hesitations. At each repeated mark of the man's
uneasiness I grew the more confident myself ; and I
advanced another step, encouraging him as I did so
with my head and hand. It was plain the castaway
had heard indifferent accounts of our island hospit-
ality ; and indeed, about this time, the people farther
north had a sorry reputation.
' Why,' I said, ' the man is black ! '
And just at that moment, in a voice that I could
168
A MAN OUT OF THE SEA
scarce have recognised, my kinsman began swearing
and praying in a mingled stream. I looked at him ;
he had fallen on his knees, his face was agonised ;
at each step of the castaway's the pitch of his voice
rose, the volubility of his utterance and the fervour
of his language redoubled. I call it prayer, for it
was addressed to God ; but surely no such ranting
incongruities were ever before addressed to the
Creator by a creature : surely if prayer can be a sin,
this mad harangue was sinful. I ran to my kins-
man, I seized him by the shoulders, I dragged him
to his feet.
' Silence, man,' said I, ' respect your God in words,
if not in action. Here, on the very scene of your
transgressions, He sends you an occasion of atone-
ment. Forward and embrace it : welcome like a
father yon creature who comes trembling to your
mercy.'
With that I tried to force him towards the black ;
but he felled me to the ground, burst from my grasp,
leaving the shoulder of his jacket, and fled up the
hillside towards the top of Aros like a deer. I
staggered to my feet again, bruised and somewhat
stunned ; the negro had paused in surprise, perhaps
in terror, some halfway between me and the wreck ;
my uncle was already far away, bounding from rock
to rock ; and I thus found myself torn for a time
between two duties. But I judged, and I pray
Heaven that I judged rightly, in favour of the poor
wretch upon the sands ; his misfortune was at least
not plainly of his own creation ; it was one, besides,
169
THE MERRY MEN
that I could certainly relieve ; and I had begun by
that time to regard my uncle as an incurable and
dismal lunatic. I advanced accordingly towards the
black, who now awaited my approach with folded
arms, like one prepared for either destiny. As I
came nearer, he reached forth his hand with a great
gesture, such as I had seen from the pulpit, and
spoke to me in something of a pulpit voice, but not
a word was comprehensible. I tried him first in
English, then in Gaelic, both in vain ; so that it was
clear we must rely upon the tongue of looks and
gestures. Thereupon I signed to him to follow me,
which he did readily and with a grave obeisance like
a fallen king ; all the while there had come no shade
of alteration in his face, neither of anxiety while he
was still waiting, nor of relief now that he was re-
assured ; if he were a slave, as I supposed, I could
not but judge he must have fallen from some high
place in his own country, and, fallen as he was, I
could not but admire his bearing. As we passed the
grave, I paused and raised my hands and eyes to
heaven in token of respect and sorrow for the dead ;
and he, as if in answer, bowed low and spread his
hands abroad ; it was a strange motion, but done like
a thing of common custom ; and I supposed it was
ceremonial in the land from which he came. At the
same time he pointed to my uncle, whom we could
just see perched upon a knoll, and touched his head
to indicate that he was mad.
We took the long way round the shore, for I
feared to excite my uncle if we struck across the
170
A MAN OUT OF THE SEA
island ; and as we walked, I had time enough to
mature the little dramatic exhibition by which I
hoped to satisfy my doubts. Accordingly, pausing
on a rock, I proceeded to imitate before the negro
the action of the man whom I had seen the day
before taking bearings with the compass at Sandag.
He understood me at once, and, taking the imitation
out of my hands, showed me where the boat was,
pointed out seaward as if to indicate the position of
the schooner, and then down along the edge of the
rock with the words ' Espirito Santo,' strangely pro-
nounced, but clear enough for recognition. I had
thus been right in my conjecture ; the pretended
historical inquiry had been but a cloak for treasure-
hunting ; the man who had played on Dr. Robertson
was the same as the foreigner who visited Grisapol
in spring, and now, with many others, lay dead
under the Roost of Aros : there had their greed
brought them, there should their bones be tossed for
evermore. In the meantime the black continued his
imitation of the scene, now looking up skyward as
though watching the approach of the storm ; now,
in the character of a seaman, waving the rest to
come aboard ; now as an officer, running along the
rock and entering the boat ; and anon bending over
imaginary oars with the air of a hurried boatman ;
but all with the same solemnity of manner, so that
I was never even moved to smile. Lastly, he in-
dicated to me, by a pantomime not to be described
in words, how he himself had gone up to examine
the stranded wreck, and, to his grief and indignation,
171
THE MERRY MEN
had been deserted by his comrades ; and thereupon
folded his arms once more, and stooped his head, like
one accepting fate.
The mystery of his presence being thus solved for
me, I explained to him by means of a sketch the fate
of the vessel and of all aboard her. He showed no
surprise nor sorrow, and, with a sudden lifting of
his open hand, seemed to dismiss his former friends
or masters (whichever they had been) into God's
pleasure. Respect came upon me and grew stronger
the more I observed him ; I saw he had a powerful
mind and a sober and severe character, such as I
loved to commune with ; and before we reached the
house of Aros I had almost forgotten, and wholly
forgiven him, his uncanny colour.
To Mary I told all that had passed without sup-
pression, though I own my heart failed me ; but I
did wrong to doubt her sense of justice.
' You did the right,' she said. ' God's will be
done.' And she set out meat for us at once.
As soon as I was satisfied, I bade Rorie keep an
eye upon the castaway, who was still eating, and set
forth again myself to find my uncle. I had not gone
far before I saw him sitting in the same place, upon
the very topmost knoll, and seemingly in the same
attitude as when I had last observed him. From
that point, as I have said, the most of Aros and the
neighbouring Ross would be spread below him like
a map ; and it was plain that he kept a bright look-
out in all directions, for my head had scarcely risen
above the summit of the first ascent before he had
172
A MAN OUT OF THE SEA
leaped to his feet and turned as if to face me. I
hailed him at once, as well as I was able, in the same
tones and words as I had often used before, when I
had come to summon him to dinner. He made not
so much as a movement in reply. I passed on a
little farther, and again tried parley, with the same
result. But when I began a second time to advance,
his insane fears blazed up again, and still in dead
silence, but with incredible speed, he began to flee
from before me along the rocky summit of the hill.
An hour before he had been dead weary, and I had
been comparatively active. But now his strength
was recruited by the fervour of insanity, and it
would have been vain for me to dream of pursuit.
Nay, the very attempt, I thought, might have in-
flamed his terrors, and thus increased the miseries of
our position. And I had nothing left but to turn
homeward and make my sad report to Mary.
She heard it, as she had heard the first, with a
concerned composure, and, bidding me lie down and
take that rest of which I stood so much in need, set
forth herself in quest of her misguided father. At
that age it would have been a strange thing that put
me from either meat or sleep ; I slept long and deep ;
and it was already long past noon before I awoke and
came downstairs into the kitchen. Mary, Rorie, and
the black castaway were seated about the fire in
silence ; and I could see that Mary had been weep-
ing. There was cause enough, as I soon learned, for
tears. First she, and then Rorie, had been forth to
seek my uncle ; each in turn had found him perched
173
THE MERRY MEN
upon the hill-top, and from each in turn he had
silently and swiftly fled. Rorie had tried to chase
him, but in vain ; madness lent a new vigour to his
bounds ; he sprang from rock to rock over the widest
gullies ; he scoured like the wind along the hill-tops ;
he doubled and twisted like a hare before the dogs ;
and Rorie at length gave in ; and the last that he
saw, my uncle was seated as before upon the crest
of Aros. Even during the hottest excitement of the
chase, even when the fleet-footed servant had come,
for a moment, very near to capture him, the poor
lunatic had uttered not a sound. He fled, and he
was silent, like a beast ; and this silence had terrified
his pursuer.
There was something heart-breaking in the situa-
tion. How to capture the madman, how to feed
him in the meanwhile, and what to do with him
when he was captured, were the three difficulties
that we had to solve.
'The black,' said I, 'is the cause of this attack.
It may even be his presence in the house that keeps
my uncle on the hill. We have done the fair thing ;
he has been fed and warmed under this roof; now I
propose that Rorie put him across the bay in the
coble, and take him through the Ross as far as
Grisapol.'
In this proposal Mary heartily concurred ; and
bidding the black follow us, we all three descended
to the pier. Certainly, Heaven's will was declared
against Gordon Darnaway ; a thing had happened,
never paralleled before in Aros; during the storm,
174
A MAN OUT OF THE SEA
the coble had broken loose, and, striking on the
rough splinters of the pier, now lay in four feet of
water with one side stove in. Three days of work
at least would be required to make her float. But I
was not to be beaten. I led the whole party round
to where the gut was narrowest, swam to the other
side, and called to the black to follow me. He
signed, with the same clearness and quiet as before,
that he knew not the art ; and there was truth
apparent in his signals, it would have occurred to
none of us to doubt his truth ; and that hope being
over, we must all go back even as we came to the
house of Aros, the negro walking in our midst with-
out embarrassment.
All we could do that day was to make one more
attempt to communicate with the unhappy madman.
Again he was visible on his perch ; again he fled in
silence. But food and a great cloak were at least
left for his comfort ; the rain, besides, had cleared
away, and the night promised to be even warm.
We might compose ourselves, we thought, until the
morrow ; rest was the chief requisite, that we might
be strengthened for unusual exertions ; and as none
cared to talk, we separated at an early hour.
I lay long awake, planning a campaign for the
morrow. I was to place the black on the side of
Sandag, whence he should head my uncle towards
the house ; Rorie in the west, I on the east, were to
complete the cordon, as best we might. It seemed
to me, the more I recalled the configuration of the
island, that it should be possible, though hard, to
175
THE MERRY MEN
force him down upon the low ground along Aros
Bay ; and once there, even with the strength of his
madness, ultimate escape was hardly to be feared.
It was on his terror of the black that I relied ; for I
made sure, however he might run, it would not be in
the direction of the man whom he supposed to have
returned from the dead, and thus one point of the
compass at least would be secure.
When at length I fell asleep, it was to be awak-
ened shortly after by a dream of wrecks, black men,
and submarine adventure ; and I found myself so
shaken and fevered that I arose, descended the stair,
and stepped out before the house. Within, Rorie
and the black were asleep together in the kitchen ;
outside was a wonderful clear night of stars, with
here and there a cloud still hanging, last stragglers
of the tempest. It was near the top of the flood,
and the Merry Men were roaring in the windless
quiet of the night. Never, not even in the height of
the tempest, had I heard their song with greater
awe. Now, when the winds were gathered home,
when the deep was dandling itself back into its
summer slumber, and when the stars rained their
gentle light over land and sea, the voice of these
tide-breakers was still raised for havoc. They
seemed, indeed, to be a part of the world's evil and
the tragic side of life. Nor were their meaningless
vociferations the only sounds that broke the silence
of the night. For I could hear, now shrill and thrill-
ing and now almost drowned, the note of a human
voice that accompanied the uproar of the Roost. I
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A MAN OUT OF THE SEA
knew it for my kinsman's ; and a great fear fell upon
me of God's judgments, and the evil in the world.
I went back again into the darkness of the house as
into a place of shelter, and lay long upon my bed,
pondering these mysteries.
It was late when I again woke, and I leaped into
my clothes and hurried to the kitchen. No one was
there ; Korie and the black had both stealthily
departed long before ; and my heart stood still at
the discovery. I could rely on Rorie's heart, but I
placed no trust in his discretion. If he had thus set
out without a word, he was plainly bent upon some
service to my uncle. But what service could he hope
to render even alone, far less in the company of the
man in whom my uncle found his fears incarnated ?
Even if I were not already too late to prevent some
deadly mischief, it was plain I must delay no longer.
With the thought I was out of the house ; and
often as I have run on the rough sides of Aros, I
never ran as I did that fatal morning. I do not
believe I put twelve minutes to the whole ascent.
My uncle was gone from his perch. The basket
had indeed been torn open and the meat scattered
on the turf; but, as we found afterwards, no mouth-
ful had been tasted ; and there was not another trace
of human existence in that wide field of view. Day
had already filled the clear heavens ; the sun already
lighted in a rosy bloom upon the crest of Ben Kyaw ;
but all below me the rude knolls of Aros and the
shield of sea lay steeped in the clear darkling twilight
of the dawn.
8— m 177
THE MERRY MEN
' Rorie ! ' I cried ; and again ' Rorie ! ' My voice
died in the silence, but there came no answer back.
If there were indeed an enterprise afoot to catch my
uncle, it was plainly not in fleetness of foot, but in
dexterity of stalking, that the hunters placed their
trust. I ran on farther, keeping the higher spurs,
and looking right and left, nor did I pause again till
I was on the mount above Sandag. I could see the
wreck, the uncovered belt of sand, the waves idly
beating, the long ledge of rocks, and on either hand
the tumbled knolls, boulders, and gullies of the
island. But still no human thing.
At a stride the sunshine fell on Aros, and the
shadows and colours leaped into being. Not half a
moment later, below me to the west, sheep began to
scatter as in a panic. There came a cry. I saw my
uncle running. I saw the black jump up in hot
pursuit ; and before I had time to understand, Rorie
also had appeared, calling directions in Gaelic as to
a dog herding sheep.
1 took to my heels to interfere, and perhaps I had
done better to have waited where I was, for I was
the means of cutting off the madman's last escape.
There was nothing before him from that moment
but the grave, the wreck, and the sea in Sandag
Bay. And yet Heaven knows that what I did was
for the best.
My uncle Gordon saw in what direction, horrible
to him, the chase was driving him. He doubled,
darting to the right and left ; but high as the fever
ran in his veins, the black was still the swifter.
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A MAN OUT OF THE SEA
Turn where he would, he was still forestalled, still
driven toward the scene of his crime. Suddenly he
began to shriek aloud, so that the coast re-echoed ;
and now both I and ltorie were calling on the black
to stop. But all was vain, for it was written other-
wise. The pursuer still ran, the chase still sped
before him screaming ; they avoided the grave, and
skimmed close past the timbers of the wreck ; in a
breath they had cleared the sand ; and still my kins-
man did not pause, but dashed straight into the
surf; and the black, now almost within reach, still
followed swiftly behind him. ltorie and I both
stopped, for the thing was now beyond the hands of
men, and these were the decrees of God that came
to pass before our eyes. There was never a sharper
ending. On that steep beach they were beyond
their depth at a bound ; neither could swim ; the
black rose once for a moment with a throttling cry ;
but the current had them, racing seaward ; and if
ever they came up again, which God alone can tell,
it would be ten minutes after, at the far end of Aros
Roost, where the sea-birds hover fishing.
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WILL O' THE MILL
THE PLAIN AND THE STARS
The Mill where Will lived with his adopted parents
stood in a falling valley between pinewoods and great
mountains. Above, hill after hill soared upwards
until they soared out of the depth of the hardiest
timber, and stood naked against the sky. Some
way up, a long grey village lay like a seam or a rag
of vapour on a wooded hillside ; and when the wind
was favourable the sound of the church bells would
drop down, thin and silvery, to Will. Below, the
valley grew ever steeper and steeper, and at the same
time widened out on either hand ; and from an emin-
ence beside the mill it was possible to see its whole
length and away beyond it over a wide plain, where
the river turned and shone, and moved on from city
to city on its voyage towards the sea. It chanced
that over this valley there lay a pass into a neigh-
bouring kingdom ; so that, quiet ^and rural as it was,
the road that ran along beside the river was a high
thoroughfare between two splendid and powerful
societies. All through the summer, travelling-
carriages came crawling up, or went plunging briskly
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WILL O' THE MILL
downwards past the mill ; and as it happened that
the other side was very much easier of ascent, the
path was not much frequented, except by people
coins: in one direction ; and of all the carriages that
Will saw go by, five-sixths were plunging briskly
downwards and only one-sixth crawling up. Much
more was this the case with foot-passengers. All
the light-footed tourists, all the pedlars laden with
strange wares, were tending downward like the river
that accompanied their path. Nor was this all ; for
when Will was yet a child a disastrous war arose
over a great part of the world. The newspapers
were full of defeats and victories, the earth rang with
cavalry hoofs, and often for days together and for
miles around the coil of battle terrified good people
from their labours in the field. Of all this, nothing
was heard for a long time in the valley ; but at last
one of the commanders pushed an army over the pass
by forced marches, and for three days horse and foot,
cannon and tumbril, drum and standard, kept pour-
ing downward past the mill. All day the child
stood and watched them on their passage ; the
rhythmical stride, the pale, unshaven faces tanned
about the eyes, the discoloured regimentals and the
tattered flags, filled him with a sense of weariness,
pity, and wonder ; and all night long, after he was in
bed, he could hear the cannon pounding and the feet
trampling, and the great armament sweeping onward
and downward past the mill. No one in the valley
ever heard the fate of the expedition, for they lay
out of the way of gossip in those troublous times ;
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WILL O' THE MILL
but Will saw one thing plainly, that not a man
returned. Whither had they all gone? Whither
went all the tourists and pedlars with strange wares ?
whither all the brisk barouches with servants in the
dicky ? whither the water of the stream, ever
coursing downward and ever renewed from above ?
Even the wind blew oftener down the valley, and
carried the dead leaves along with it in the fall. It
seemed like a great conspiracy of things animate and
inanimate ; they all went downward, fleetly and
gaily downward, and only he, it seemed, remained
behind, like a stock upon the wayside. It some-
times made him glad when he noticed how the fishes
kept their heads up stream. They, at least, stood
faithfully by him, while all else were posting down-
ward to the unknown world.
One evening he asked the miller where the river
went.
' It goes down the valley,' answered he, ' and turns
a power of mills — sixscore mills, they say, from here
to Unterdeck — and it none the wearier after all.
And then it goes out into the lowlands, and waters
the great corn country, and runs through a sight of
fine cities (so they say) where kings live all alone in
great palaces, with a sentry walking up and down
before the door. And it goes under bridges with
stone men upon them, looking down and smiling so
curious at the water, and living folks leaning their
elbows on the wall and looking over too. And then
it goes on and on, and down through marshes and
sands, until at last it falls into the sea, where the
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WILL O' THE MILL
ships are that bring parrots and tobacco from the
Indies. Ay, it has a long trot before it as it goes
singing over our weir, bless its heart ! '
' And what is the sea ? ' asked Will.
'The sea!' cried the miller. 'Lord help us all,
it is the greatest thing God made ! That is where
all the water in the world runs down into a great
salt lake. There it lies, as flat as my hand and as
innocent-like as a child ; but they do say when the
wind blows it gets up into water-mountains bigger
than any of ours, and swallows down great ships
bigger than our mill, and makes such a roaring that
you can hear it miles away upon the land. There
are great fish in it five times bigger than a bull, and
one old serpent as long as our river and as old as all
the world, with whiskers like a man, and a crown of
silver on her head.'
Will thought he had never heard anything like
this, and he kept on asking question after question
about the world that lay away down the river, with
all its perils and marvels, until the old miller became
quite interested himself, and at last took him by the
hand and led him to the hill-top that overlooks the
valley and the plain. The sun was near setting, and
hung low down in a cloudless sky. Everything was
defined and glorified in golden light. Will had
never seen so great an expanse of country in his
life ; he stood and gazed with all his eyes. He could
see the cities, and the woods and fields, and the
bright curves of the river, and far away to where the
rim of the plain trenched along the shining heavens.
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WILL O' THE MILL
An overmastering emotion seized upon the boy, soul
and body; his heart beat so thickly that he could
not breathe ; the scene swam before his eyes ; the
sun seemed to wheel round and round, and throw
off, as it turned, strange shapes which disappeared
with the rapidity of thought, and were succeeded by
others. Will covered his face with his hands, and
burst into a violent fit of tears ; and the poor miller,
sadly disappointed and perplexed, saw nothing better
for it than to take him up in his arms and carry him
home in silence.
From that day forward Will was full of new hopes
and longings. Something kept tugging at his heart-
strings ; the running water carried his desires along
with it as he dreamed over its fleeting surface ; the
wind, as it ran over innumerable tree-tops, hailed
him with encouraging words ; branches beckoned
downward ; the open road, as it shouldered round
the angles and went turning and vanishing fast and
faster down the valley, tortured him with its solicita-
tions. He spent long whiles on the eminence,
looking down the rivershed and abroad on the fat
lowlands, and watched the clouds that travelled forth
upon the sluggish wind and trailed their purple
shadows on the plain ; or he would linger by the way-
side, and follow the carriages with his eyes as they
rattled downward by the river. It did not matter
what it was ; everything that went that way, were it
cloud or carriage, bird, or brown water in the stream,
he felt his heart flow out after it in an ecstasy of
longing.
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WILL O' THE MILL
We are told by men of science that all the ven-
tures of mariners on the sea, all that counter-marching
of tribes and races that confounds old history with
its dust and rumour, sprang from nothing more
abstruse than the laws of supply and demand, and a
certain natural instinct for cheap rations. To any
one thinking deeply, this will seem a dull and pitiful
explanation. The tribes that came swarming out of
the North and East, if they were indeed pressed
onward from behind by others, were drawn at the
same time by the magnetic influence of the South
and West. The fame of other lands had reached
them ; the name of the eternal city rang in their
ears ; they were not colonists, but pilgrims ; they
travelled towards wine and gold and sunshine, but
their hearts were set on something higher. That
divine unrest, that old stinging trouble of humanity
that makes all high achievements and all miserable
failure, the same that spread wings with Icarus, the
same that sent Columbus into the desolate Atlantic,
inspired and supported these barbarians on their
perilous march. There is one legend which pro-
foundly represents their spirit, of how a flying party
of these Avanderers encountered a very old man shod
with iron. The old man asked them whither they
were going ; and they answered with one voice : ' To
the Eternal City ! ' He looked upon them gravely.
' I have sought it,' he said, ' over the most part of
the world. Three such pairs as I now carry on my
feet have I worn out upon this pilgrimage, and now
the fourth is growing slender underneath my steps.
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WILL O' THE MILL
And all this while I have not found the city.' And
he turned and went his own way alone, leaving them
astonished.
And yet this would scarcely parallel the intensity
of Will's feeling for the plain. If he could only go
far enough out there, he felt as if his eyesight would
be purged and clarified, as if his hearing would grow
more delicate, and his very breath would come and
go with luxury. He was transplanted and withering
where he was ; he lay in a strange country and Avas
sick for home. Bit by bit, he pieced together broken
notions of the world below : of the river, ever moving
and growing until it sailed forth into the majestic
ocean ; of the cities, full of brisk and beautiful
people, playing fountains, bands of music and marble
palaces, and lighted up at night from end to end
with artificial stars of gold ; of the great churches,
wise universities, brave armies, and untold money
lying stored in vaults ; of the high-flying vice that
moved in the sunshine, and the stealth and swiftness
of midnight murder. I have said he was sick as if
for home : the figure halts. He was like some one
lying in twilit, formless pre-existence, and stretching
out his hands lovingly towards many-coloured, many-
sounding life. It was no wonder he was unhappy,
he would go and tell the fish : they were made for
their life, wished for no more than worms and run-
ning water, and a hole below a falling. bank ; but he
was differently designed, full of desires and aspira-
tions, itching at the fingers, lusting with the eyes,
whom the whole variegated world could not satisfy
1 86
WILL O' THE MILT,
with aspects. The true life, the true bright sun-
shine, lay far out upon the plain. And, O ! to see
this sunlight once before he died ! to move with a
jocund spirit in a golden land ! to hear the trained
singers and sweet church bells, and see the holiday
gardens ! ' And, O fish ! ' he would cry, * if you
would only turn your noses down stream, you could
swim so easily into the fabled waters and see the
vast ships passing over your head like clouds, and
hear the great water-hills making music over you all
day long ! ' But the fish kept looking patiently in
their own direction, until Will hardly knew whether
to laugh or cry.
Hitherto the traffic on the road had passed by
Will, like something seen in a picture : he had
perhaps exchanged salutations with a tourist, or
caught sight of an old gentleman in a travelling cap
at a carriage window ; but for the most part it had
been a mere symbol, which he contemplated from
apart and with something of a superstitious feeling.
A time came at last when this was to be changed.
The miller, who was a greedy man in his way, and
never forwent an opportunity of honest profit,
turned the mill-house into a little wayside inn, and,
several pieces of good fortune falling in opportunely,
built stables and got the position of postmaster on
the road. It now became Will's duty to wait upon
people, as they sat to break their fasts in the little
arbour at the top of the mill garden ; and you may
be sure that he kept his ears open, and learned many
new things about the outside world as he brought
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WILL O' THE MILL
the omelette or the wine. Nay, he would often get
into conversation with single guests, and by adroit
questions and polite attention, not only gratify his
own curiosity, but win the goodwill of the travellers.
Many complimented the old couple on their serving-
boy ; and a professor was eager to take him away
with him, and have him properly educated in the
plain. The miller and his wife were mightily
astonished, and even more pleased. They thought
it a very good thing that they should have opened
their inn. 'You see,' the old man would remark,
' he has a kind of talent for a publican ; he never
would have made anything else ! ' And so life
wagged on in the valley, with high satisfaction to all
concerned but Will. Every carriage that left the
inn-door seemed to take a part of him away with it ;
and when people jestingly offered him a lift, he
could with difficulty command his emotion. Night
after night he would dream that he was awakened
by flustered servants, and that a splendid equipage
waited at the door to carry him down into the plain ;
night after night ; until the dream, which had seemed
all jollity to him at first, began to take on a colour
of gravity, and the nocturnal summons and waiting
equipage occupied a place in his mind as something
to be both feared and hoped for.
One day, when Will was about sixteen, a fat
young man arrived at sunset to pass the night. He
was a contented-looking fellow, with a jolly eye, and
carried a knapsack. While dinner was preparing, he
sat in the arbour to read a book ; but as soon as he
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WILL O' THE MILL
had begun to observe Will, the book was laid aside ;
he was plainly one of those who prefer living people
to people made of ink and paper. Will, on his part,
although he had not been much interested in the
stranger at first sight, soon began to take a great
deal of pleasure in his talk, which was full of good
nature and good sense, and at last conceived a great
respect for his character and wisdom. They sat far
into the night ; and about two in the morning Will
opened his heart to the young man, and told him
how he longed to leave the valley, and what bright
hopes he had connected with the cities of the plain.
The young man whistled, and then broke into a smile.
' My young friend,' he remarked, ' you are a very
curious little fellow, to be sure, and wish a great
many things which you will never get. Why, you
would feel quite ashamed if you knew how the little
fellows in these fairy cities of yours are all after the
same sort of nonsense, and keep breaking their hearts
to get up into the mountains. And let me tell you,
those who go down into the plains are a very short
while there before they wish themselves heartily
back again. The air is not so light nor so pure ;
nor is the sun any brighter. As for the beautiful
men and women, you would see many of them in
rags, and many of them deformed with horrible
disorders, and a city is so hard a place for people
who are poor and sensitive that many choose to die
by their own hand.'
' You must think me very simple,' answered Will.
' Although I have never been out of this valley,
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WILL O' THE MILL
believe me, I have used my eyes. I know how one
thing lives on another; for instance, how the fish
hangs in the eddy to catch his fellows ; and the
shepherd, who makes so pretty a picture carrying
home the lamb, is only carrying it home for dinner.
I do not expect to find all things right in your
cities. That is not what troubles me ; it might have
been that once upon a time ; but although I live
here always, I have asked many questions and learned
a great deal in these last years, and certainly enough
to cure me of my old fancies. But you would not
have me die like a dog and not see all that is to be
seen, and do all that a man can do, let it be good or
evil ? you would not have me spend all my days
between this road here and the river, and not so
much as make a motion to be up and live my life ?
— I would rather die out of hand,' he cried, 'than
linger on as I am doing.'
'Thousands of people,' said the young man, 'live
and die like you, and are none the less happy.'
'Ah!' said Will, 'if there are thousands who would
like, why should not one of them have my place ? '
It was quite dark ; there was a hanging lamp in
the arbour which lit up the table and the faces of the
speakers ; and along the arch, the leaves upon the
trellis stood out illuminated against the night sky, a
pattern of transparent green upon a dusky purple.
The fat young man rose, and, taking Will by the
arm, led him out under the open heavens.
' Did you ever look at the stars ? ' he asked, point-
ing upwards.
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WILL O' THE MILL
' Often and often,' answered Will.
' And do you know what they are ? '
' I have fancied many things.'
' They are worlds like ours,' said the young man.
' Some of them less ; many of them a million times
greater ; and some of the least sparkles that you see
are not only worlds but whole clusters of worlds
turning about each other in the midst of space. We
do not know what there may be in any of them ;
perhaps the answer to all our difficulties or the cure
of all our sufferings : and yet we can never reach
them ; not all the skill of the craftiest of men can
fit out a ship for the nearest of these our neighbours,
nor would the life of the most aged suffice for such
a journey. When a great battle has been lost or a
dear friend is dead, when we are hipped or in high
spirits, there they are, unweariedly shining overhead.
We may stand down here, a whole army of us
together, and shout until we break our hearts, and
not a whisper reaches them. We may climb the
highest mountain, and we are no nearer them. All
we can do is to stand down here in the garden and
take off our hats ; the starshine lights upon our
heads, and where mine is a little bald, I daresay you
can see it glisten in the darkness. The mountain
and the mouse. That is like to be all we shall ever
have to do with Arcturus or Aldebaran. Can you
apply a parable ? ' he added, laying his hand upon
Will's shoulder. ' It is not the same thins: as a
reason, but usually vastly more convincing.'
Will hung his head a little, and then raised it once
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WILL O' THE MILL
more to heaven. The stars seemed to expand and
emit a sharper brilliancy ; and as he kept turning his
eyes higher and higher, they seemed to increase in
multitude under his gaze.
' I see,' he said, turning to the young man. ' We
are in a rat-trap.'
' Something of that size. Did you ever see a
squirrel turning in a cage ? and another squirrel
sitting philosophically over his nuts ? I needn't ask
you which of them looked more of a fool.'
THE PARSON S MARJORY
After some years the old people died, both in one
winter, very carefully tended by their adopted son,
and very quietly mourned when they were gone.
People who had heard of his roving fancies supposed
he would hasten to sell the property, and go down
the river to push his fortunes. But there was never
any sign of such an intention on the part of Will.
On the contrary, he had the inn set on a better
footing, and hired a couple of servants to assist him
in carrying it on ; and there he settled down, a kind,
talkative, inscrutable young man, six feet three in
his stockings, with an iron constitution and a friendly
voice. He soon began to take rank in the district
as a bit of an oddity : it was not much to be won-
dered at from the first, for he was always full of
notions, and kept calling the plainest common sense
in question ; but what most raised the report upon
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WILL O' THE MILL
him was the odd circumstance of his courtship with
the parson's Marjory.
The parson's Marjory was a lass about nineteen,
when Will would be about thirty ; well enough
looking, and much better educated than any other
girl in that part of the country, as became her
parentage. She held her head very high, and had
already refused several offers of marriage with a
grand air, which had got her hard names among the
neighbours. For all that she was a good girl, and
one that would have made any man well contented.
Will had never seen much of her ; for although
the church and parsonage were only two miles from
his own door, he was never known to go there but
on Sundays. It chanced, however, that the par-
sonage fell into disrepair, and had to be dismantled ;
and the parson and his daughter took lodgings for a
month or so, on very much reduced terms, at Will's
inn. Now, what with the inn, and the mill, and the
old miller's savings, our friend was a man of sub-
stance ; and besides that he had a name for good
temper and shrewdness, which make a capital portion
in marriage ; and so it was currently gossiped,
among their ill-wishers, that the parson and his
daughter had not chosen their temporary lodging
with their eyes shut. Will was about the last man in
the world to be cajoled or frightened into marriage.
You had only to look into his eyes, limpid and still
like pools of water, and yet with a sort of clear light
that seemed to come from within, and you would
understand at once that here was one who knew his
8— n 193
WILL O' THE MILL
own mind and would stand to it immovably. Mar-
jory herself was no weakling by her looks, with
strong, steady eyes and a resolute and quiet bearing.
It might be a question whether she was not Will's
match in steadfastness, after all, or which of them
would rule the roast in marriage. But Marjory had
never given it a thought, and accompanied her father
with the most unshaken innocence and unconcern.
The season was still so early that Will's customers
were few and far between ; but the lilacs were already
flowering, and the weather was so mild that the
party took dinner under the trellis, with the noise of
the river in their ears and the woods ringing about
them with the songs of birds. Will soon began to
take a particular pleasure in these dinners. The
parson was rather a dull companion, with a habit of
dozing at table ; but nothing rude or cruel ever fell
from his lips. And as for the parson's daughter, she
suited her surroundings with the best grace imagin-
able ; and whatever she said seemed so pat and
pretty that Will conceived a great idea of her talents.
He could see her face, as she leaned forward, against
a background of rising pinewoods ; her eyes shone
peaceably ; the light lay around her hair like a
kerchief ; something that was hardly a smile rippled
her pale cheeks, and Will could not contain himself
from gazing on her in an agreeable dismay. She
looked, even in her quietest moments, so complete
in herself, and so quick with life down to her finger-
tips and the very skirts of her dress, that the
remainder of created things became no more than a
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WILL O' THE MILL
blot by comparison ; and if Will glanced away from
her to her surroundings, the trees looked inanimate
and senseless, the clouds hung in heaven like dead
things, and even the mountain tops were disenchanted.
The whole valley could not compare in looks with
this one girl.
Will was always observant in the society of his
fellow-creatures ; but his observation became almost
painfully eager in the case of Marjory. He listened
to all she uttered, and read her eyes, at the same
time, for the unspoken commentary. Many kind,
simple, and sincere speeches found an echo in his
heart. He became conscious of a soul beautifully
poised upon itself, nothing doubting, nothing desir-
ing, clothed in peace. It was not possible to separate
her thoughts from her appearance. The turn of her
wrist, the still sound of her voice, the light in her
eyes, the lines of her body, fell in tune with her grave
and gentle words, like the accompaniment that sus-
tains and harmonises the voice of the singer. Her
influence was one thing, not to be divided or dis-
cussed, only to be felt with gratitude and joy. To
Will, her presence recalled something of his child-
hood, and the thought of her took its place in his
mind beside that of dawn, of running water, and of
the earliest violets and lilacs. It is the property of
things seen for the first time, or for the first time
after long, like the flowers in spring, to reawaken in
us the sharp edge of sense and that impression of
mystic strangeness which otherwise passes out of life
with the coming of years ; but the sight of a loved
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WILL O' THE MILL
face is what renews a man's character from the
fountain upwards.
One day after dinner Will took a stroll among the
firs; a grave beatitude possessed him from top to
toe, and he kept smiling to himself and the landscape
as he went. The river ran between the stepping-
stones with a pretty wimple ; a bird sang loudly in
the wood ; the hill-tops looked immeasurably high,
and, as he glanced at them from time to time, seemed
to contemplate his movements with a beneficent but
awful curiosity. His way took him to the eminence
which overlooked the plain ; and there he sat down
upon a stone, and fell into deep and pleasant thought.
The plain lay abroad with its cities and silver river ;
everything was asleep, except a great eddy of birds
which kept rising and falling and going round and
round in the blue air. He repeated Marjory's name
aloud, and the sound of it gratified his ear. He
shut his eyes, and her image sprang up before him,
quietly luminous and attended with good thoughts.
The river might run for ever ; the birds fly higher
and higher till they touched the stars. He saw it
was empty bustle after all ; for here, without stirring
a foot, waiting patiently in his own narrow valley,
he also had attained the better sunlight.
The next day Will made a sort of declaration
across the dinner-table, while the parson was filling
his pipe.
' Miss Marjory,' he said, ' I never knew any one I
liked so well as you. I am mostly a cold, unkindly
sort of man ; not from want of heart, but out of
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WILL O' THE MILL
strangeness in my way of thinking ; and people seem
far away from me. Tis as if there were a circle
round me, which kept every one out but you ; I
can hear the others talking and laughing ; but you
come quite close. — Maybe this is disagreeable to
you ? ' he asked.
Marjory made no answer.
' Speak up, girl,' said the parson.
' Nay, now,' returned Will, ' I wouldn't press her,
parson. I feel tongue-tied myself, who am not used
to it ; and she 's a woman, and little more than a
child, when all is said. But for my part, as far as
I can understand what people mean by it, I fancy I
must be what they call in love. I do not wish to
be held as committing myself ; for I may be wrong ;
but that is how I believe things are with me. And
if Miss Marjory should feel any otherwise on her part,
mayhap she would be so kind as shake her head.'
Marjory was silent, and gave no sign that she had
heard.
' How is that, parson ? ' asked Will.
'The girl must speak,' replied the parson, laying
down his pipe. — ' Here s our neighbour, who says he
loves you, Madge. Do you love him, ay or no ? '
• I think I do,' said Marjory faintly.
' Well then, that 's all that could be wished ! ' cried
Will heartily. And he took her hand across the
table and held it a moment in both of his with
great satisfaction.
' You must marry,' observed the parson, replacing
his pipe in his mouth.
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WILL O' THE MILL
' Is that the right thing to do, think you ? ' de-
manded Will.
' It is indispensable,' said the parson.
' Very well,' replied the wooer.
Two or three days passed away with great delight
to Will, although a bystander might scarce have
found it out. He continued to take his meals op-
posite Marjory, and to talk with her and gaze upon
her in her father's presence ; but he made no attempt
to see her alone, nor in any other way changed his
conduct towards her from what it had been since
the beginning. Perhaps the girl was a little dis-
appointed, and perhaps not unjustly ; and yet if it
had been enough to be always in the thoughts of
another person, and so pervade and alter his whole
life, she might have been thoroughly contented.
For she was never out of Will's mind for an instant.
He sat over the stream, and watched the dust of
the eddy, and the poised fish, and straining weeds ;
he wandered out alone into the purple even, with
all the blackbirds piping round him in the wood ;
he rose early in the morning, and saw the sky turn
from grey to gold, and the light leap upon the hill-
tops ; and all the while he kept wondering if he had
never seen such things before, or how it was that
they should look so different now. The sound of
his own mill-wheel, or of the wind among the
trees, confounded and charmed his heart. The most
enchanting thoughts presented themselves unbidden
in his mind. He was so happy that he could not
sleep at night, and so restless that he could hardly
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WILL O' THE MILL
sit still out of her company. And yet it seemed us
if he avoided her rather than sought her out.
One day, as he was coming home from a ramble,
AVill found Marjory in the garden picking flowers,
and, as he came up with her, slackened his pace and
continued walking by her side.
' You like flowers ? ' he said.
'Indeed I love them dearly,' she replied. 'Do
you ? '
' Why, no,' said he, ' not so much. They are a
very small affair when all is done. I can fancy
people caring for them greatly, but not doing as you
are just now.'
' How ? ' she asked, pausing and looking up at
him.
' Plucking them,' said he. ' They are a deal better
off where they are, and look a deal prettier, if you
go to that.'
' I wish to have them for my own,' she answered,
' to carry them near my heart, and keep them in my
room. They tempt me when they grow here ; they
seem to say, " Come and do something with us " ;
but once I have cut them and put them by, the
charm is laid, and I can look at them with quite an
easy heart.'
'You wish to possess them,' replied Will, 'in
order to think no more about them. It 's a bit like
killing the goose with the golden eggs. It 's a bit
like what I wished to do when I was a boy.
Because I had a fancy for looking out over the plain,
I wished to go down there — where I couldn't look
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WILL O' THE MILL
out over it any longer. Was not that fine reasoning?
Dear, dear, if they only thought of it, all the world
would do like me ; and you would let your flowers
alone, just as I stay up here in the mountains.'
Suddenly he broke off sharp. ' By the Lord ! ' he
cried. And when she asked him what was wrong,
he turned the question off, and walked away into
the house with rather a humorous expression of
face.
He was silent at table ; and after the night had
fallen and the stars had come out overhead, he
walked up and down for hours in the courtyard and
garden with an uneven pace. There was still a light
in the window of Marjory's room : one little oblong
patch of orange in a world of dark blue hills and
silver starlight. Will's mind ran a great deal on the
window ; but his thoughts were not very lover-like.
'There she is in her room,' he thought, 'and there
are the stars overhead : — a blessing upon both ! '
Both were good influences in his life ; both soothed
and braced him in his profound contentment with
the world. And what more should he desire with
either ? The fat young man and his counsels were
so present to his mind that he threw back his head,
and, putting his hands before his mouth, shouted
aloud to the populous heavens. Whether from the
position of his head or the sudden strain of the
exertion, he seemed to see a momentary shock
among the stars, and a diffusion of frosty light pass
from one to another along the sky. At the same
instant a corner of the blind was lifted and lowered
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WILL O' THE MILL
again at once. He laughed a loud ho-ho ! ' One
and another ! ' thought Will. * The stars tremble,
and the blind goes up. Why, before Heaven, what
a great magician I must be ! Now if I were only a
fool, should not I be in a pretty way ? ' And he
went off to bed, chuckling to himself : ' If I were
only a fool ! '
The next morning, pretty early, he saw her once
more in the garden, and sought her out.
' I have been thinking about getting married,' he
began abruptly ; ' and after having turned it all over,
I have made up my mind it 's not worth while.'
She turned upon him for a single moment; but
his radiant, kindly appearance would, under the cir-
cumstances, have disconcerted an angel, and she
looked down again upon the ground in silence. He
could see her tremble.
' I hope you don't mind,' he went on, a little taken
aback. ' You ought not. I have turned it all over,
and upon my soul there 's nothing in it. We should
never be one whit nearer than we are just now, and,
if I am a wise man, nothing like so happy.'
' It is unnecessary to go round about with me,
she said. ' I very well remember that you refused
to commit yourself; and now that I see you were
mistaken, and in reality have never cared for me, I
can only feel sad that I have been so far misled.'
' I ask your pardon,' said Will stoutly ; ' you do
not understand my meaning. As to whether I have
ever loved you or not, I must leave that to others.
But for one thing, my feeling is not changed ; and
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WILL O' THE MILL
for another, you may make it your boast that you
have made my whole life and character something
different from what they were. I mean what I say ;
no less. I do not think getting married is worth
while. I would rather you went on living with your
father, so that I could walk over and see you once,
or maybe twice a week, as people go to church, and
then we should both be all the happier between
whiles. That 's my notion. But I '11 marry you if
you will,' he added.
' Do you know that you are insulting me ? ' she
broke out.
' Not I, Marjory,' said he ; 'if there is anything
in a clear conscience, not I. I offer all my heart's
best affection ; you can take it or want it, though
I suspect it 's beyond either your power or mine to
change what has once been done, and set me fancy-
free. 1 11 marry you, if you like ; but I tell you
again and again, it's not worth while, and we had
best stay friends. Though I am a quiet man, I have
noticed a heap of things in my life. Trust in me,
and take things as I propose ; or, if you don't like
that, say the word, and I '11 marry you out of hand.'
There was a considerable pause, and Will, who
began to feel uneasy, began to grow angry in con-
sequence.
' It seems you are too proud to say your mind,' he
said. ' Believe me that 's a pity. A clean shrift
makes simple living. Can a man be more downright
or honourable to a woman than I have been ? I
have said my say, and given you your choice. Do
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WILL O' THE MILL
you want me to marry you ? or will you take my
friendship, as I think best ? or have you had enough
of me for good ? Speak out for the dear God's sake !
You know your father told you a girl should speak
her mind in these affairs.'
She seemed to recover herself at that, turned
without a word, walked rapidly through the garden,
and disappeared into the house, leaving Will in
some confusion as to the result. He walked up and
down the garden, whistling softly to himself. Some-
times he stopped and contemplated the sky and hill-
tops ; sometimes he went down to the tail of the
weir and sat there, looking foolishly in the water.
All this dubiety and perturbation was so foreign to
his nature and the life which he had resolutely chosen
for himself, that he began to regret Marjory's arrival.
' After all,' he thought, ' I was as happy as a man
need be. I could come down here and watch my
fishes all day long if I wanted : I was as settled and
contented as my old mill.'
Marjory came down to dinner, looking very trim
and quiet ; and no sooner were all three at table
than she made her father a speech, with her eyes
fixed upon her plate, but showing no other sign of
embarrassment or distress.
' Father,' she began, ' Mr. Will and I have been
talking things over. We see that we have each
made a mistake about our feelings, and he has
agreed, at my request, to give up all idea of marriage,
and be no more than my very good friend, as in the
past. You see, there is no shadow of a quarrel, and
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WILL O' THE MILL
indeed I hope we shall see a great deal of him in the
future, for his visits will always be welcome in our
house. Of course, father, you will know best, but
perhaps we should do better to leave Mr. Will's
house for the present. I believe, after what has
passed, we should hardly be agreeable inmates for
some days.'
Will, who had commanded himself with difficulty
from the first, broke out upon this into an inarticu-
late noise, and raised one hand with an appearance
of real dismay, as if he were about to interfere and
contradict. But she checked him at once, looking
up at him with a swift glance and an angry flush
upon her cheek.
' You will perhaps have the good grace,' she said,
'to let me explain these matters for myself.'
Will was put entirely out of countenance by her
expression and the ring of her voice. He held his
peace, concluding that there were some things about
this girl beyond his comprehension — in which he was
exactly right.
The poor parson was quite crestfallen. He tried
to prove that this was no more than a true lovers'
tiff, which would pass off before night ; and when
he was dislodged from that position, he went on to
argue that where there Avas no quarrel there could
be no call for a separation ; for the good man liked
both his entertainment and his host It was curious
to see how the girl managed them, saying little all
the time, and that very quietly, and yet twisting
them round her finger and insensibly leading them
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WILL O' THE MILL
wherever she would by feminine tact and general-
ship. It scarcely seemed to have been her doing —
it seemed as if things had merely so fallen out — that
she and her father took their departure that same
afternoon in a farm-cart, and went farther down the
valley, to wait, until their own house was ready
for them, in another hamlet. But Will had been
observing closely, and was well aware of her dexterity
and resolution. When he found himself alone he
had a great many curious matters to turn over in his
mind. He was very sad and solitary, to begin with.
All the interest had gone out of his life, and he
might look up at the stars as long as he pleased,
he somehow failed to find support or consolation.
And then he was in such a turmoil of spirit about
Marjory. He had been puzzled and irritated at her
behaviour, and yet he could not keep himself from
admiring it. He thought he recognised a fine, per-
verse angel in that still soul which he had never
hitherto suspected ; and though he saw it was an
influence that would fit but ill with his own life
of artificial calm, he could not keep himself from
ardently desiring to possess it. Like a man who has
lived among shadows and now meets the sun, he was
both pained and delighted.
As the days went forward he passed from one
extreme to another; now pluming himself on the
strength of his determination, now despising his
timid and silly caution. The former was, perhaps,
the true thought of his heart, and represented the
regular tenor of the man's reflections ; but the latter
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WILL O' THE MILL
burst forth from time to time with an unruly violence,
and then he would forget all consideration, and go
up and down his house and garden or walk among
the fir-woods like one who is beside himself with
remorse. To equable, steady-minded Will, this
state of matters was intolerable ; and he determined,
at whatever cost, to bring it to an end. So, one
warm summer afternoon, he put on his best clothes,
took a thorn switch in his hand, and set out down
the valley by the river. As soon as he had taken
his determination, he had regained at a bound his
customary peace of heart, and he enjoyed the bright
weather and the variety of the scene without any
admixture of alarm or unpleasant eagerness. It was
nearly the same to him how the matter turned out.
If she accepted him he would have to marry her this
time, which perhaps was all for the best. If she
refused him, he would have done his utmost, and
might follow his own way in the future with an un-
troubled conscience. He hoped, on the whole, she
would refuse him ; and then, again, as he saw the
brown roof which sheltered her, peeping through
some willows at an angle of the stream, he was half-
inclined to reverse the wish, and more than half-
ashamed of himself for this infirmity of purpose.
Marjory seemed glad to see him, and gave him
her hand without affectation or delay.
1 1 have been thinking about this marriage,' he
began.
' So have I,' she answered. ' And I respect you
more and more for a very wise man. You under-
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WILL O' THE MILL
stood me better than 1 understood myself; and I am
now quite certain that things are all for the best as
they are.'
' At the same time ' ventured Will.
' You must be tired,' she interrupted. ' Take a
seat and let me fetch you a glass of wine. The
afternoon is so warm ; and I wish you not to be
displeased with your visit. You must come quite
often ; once a week, if you can spare the time ; I am
always so glad to see my friends.'
'Oh, very well,' thought Will to himself. 'It
appears I was right after all' And he paid a very
agreeable visit, walked home again in capital spirits,
and gave himself no further concern about the
matter.
For nearly three years Will and Marjory con-
tinued on these terms, seeing each other once or
twice a week without any word of love between
them ; and for all that time I believe Will was
nearly as happy as a man can be. He rather stinted
himself the pleasure of seeing her ; and he would
often walk half-way over to the parsonage, and then
back again, as if to whet his appetite. Indeed, there
was one corner of the road, whence he could see the
church-spire wedged into a crevice of the valley
between sloping fir-woods, with a triangular snatch
of plain by way of background, which he greatly
affected as a place to sit and moralise in before
returning homewards ; and the peasants got so much
into the habit of finding him there in the twilight that
they gave it the name of 'Will o' the Mill's Corner.'
207
WILL O' THE MILL
At the end of the three years Marjory played him
a sad trick by suddenly marrying somebody else.
Will kept his countenance bravely, and merely
remarked that, for as little as he knew of women, he
had acted very prudently in not marrying her him-
self three years before. She plainly knew very little
of her own mind, and, in spite of a deceptive manner,
was as fickle and flighty as the rest of them. He
had to congratulate himself on an escape, he said,
and would take a higher opinion of his own wisdom
in consequence. But at heart he was reasonably
displeased, moped a good deal for a month or two,
and fell away in flesh, to the astonishment of his
serving-lads.
It was perhaps a year after this marriage that
Will was awakened late one night by the sound of a
horse galloping on the road, followed by precipitate
knocking at the inn -door. He opened his window
and saw a farm-servant, mounted and holding a led
horse by the bridle, who told him to make what
haste he could and go along with him ; for Marjory
was dying, and had sent urgently to fetch him to
her bedside. Will was no horseman, and made so
little speed upon the way that the poor young wife
was very near her end before he arrived. But they
had some minutes' talk in private, and he was
present and wept very bitterly while she breathed
her last.
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WILL O' THE MILL
DEATH
Year after year went away into nothing, with
great explosions and outcries in the cities on the
plain : red revolt springing up and being suppressed
in blood, battle swaying hither and thither, patient
astronomers in observatory towers picking out and
christening new stars, plays being performed in
lighted theatres, people being carried into hospital
on stretchers, and all the usual turmoil and agitation
of men's lives in crowded centres. Up in Wills
valley only the winds and seasons made an epoch ;
the fish hung in the swift stream, the birds circled
overhead, the pine-tops rustled underneath the stars,
the tall hills stood over all ; and Will went to and
fro, minding his wayside inn, until the snow began
to thicken on his head. His heart was young and
vigorous ; and if his pulses kept a sober time, they
still beat strong and steady in his wrists. He carried
a ruddy stain on either cheek, like a ripe apple ; he
stooped a little, but his step was still firm ; and his
sinewy hands Avere reached out to all men with a
friendly pressure. His face was covered with those
wrinkles which are got in open air, and which, rightly
looked at, are no more than a sort of permanent
sunburning ; such wrinkles heighten the stupidity of
stupid faces ; but to a person like Will, with his
clear eyes and smiling mouth, only give another
charm by testifying to a simple and easy life. His
talk was full of wise sayings. He had a taste for
8— o 209
WILL O' THE MILL
other people ; and other people had a taste for him.
When the valley was full of tourists in the season,
there were merry nights in Will's arbour ; and his
views, which seemed whimsical to his neighbours,
were often enough admired by learned people out of
towns and colleges. Indeed, he had a very noble
old age, and grew daily better known ; so that his
fame was heard of in the cities of the plain ; and
young men who had been summer travellers spoke
together in caf£s of Will o' the Mill and his rough
philosophy. Many and many an invitation, you
may be sure, he had ; but nothing could tempt him
from his upland valley. He would shake his head
and smile over his tobacco-pipe with a deal of mean-
ing. ' You come too late,' he would answer. ' I
am a dead man now : I have lived and died already.
Fifty years ago you would have brought my heart
into my mouth ; and now you do not even tempt
me. But that is the object of long living, that man
should cease to care about life.' And again : ' There
is only one difference between a long life and a good
dinner : that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.'
Or once more : ' When I was a boy I was a bit
puzzled, and hardly knew whether it was myself or
the world that was curious and worth looking into.
Now, I know it is myself, and stick to that.'
He never showed any symptom of frailty, but kept
stalwart and firm to the last ; but they say he grew
less talkative towards the end, and would listen to
other people by the hour in an amused and sympa-
thetic silence. Only, when he did speak, it was more
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WILL O' THE MILL
to the point and more charged with old experience.
He drank a bottle of wine gladly ; above all, at sun-
set on the hill-top or quite late at night under the
stars in the arbour. The sight of something attrac-
tive and unattainable seasoned his enjoyment, he
would say ; and he professed he had lived long
enough to admire a candle all the more when he
could compare it with a planet.
One night, in his seventy-second year, he awoke
in bed in such uneasiness of body and mind that he
arose and dressed himself and went out to meditate
in the arbour. It was pitch dark, without a star ;
the river was swollen, and the wet woods and
meadows loaded the air with perfume. It had
thundered during the day, and it promised more
thunder for the morrow. A murky, stifling night
for a man of seventy-two ! Whether it was the
weather or the wakefulness, or some little touch of
fever in his old limbs, Will's mind was besieged by
tumultuous and crying memories. His boyhood,
the night with the fat young man, the death of his
adopted parents, the summer days with Marjory, and
many of those small circumstances, which seem
nothing to another, and are yet the very gist of a
man's own life to himself — things seen, words heard,
looks misconstrued — arose from their forgotten
corners and usurped his attention. The dead them-
selves were with him, not merely taking part in this
thin show of memory that defiled before his brain,
but revisiting his bodily senses as they do in pro-
found and vivid dreams. The fat young man leaned
211
WILL O' THE MILL
his elbows on the table opposite ; Marjory came and
went with an apronful of flowers between the garden
and the arbour ; he could hear the old parson knock-
ing out his pipe or blowing his resonant nose. The
tide of his consciousness ebbed and flowed : he was
sometimes half-asleep and drowned in his recollec-
tions of the past : and sometimes he was broad
awake, wondering at himself. But about the middle
of the night he was startled by the voice of the dead
miller calling to him out of the house as he used to
do on the arrival of custom. The hallucination was
so perfect that Will sprang from his seat and stood
listening for the summons to be repeated ; and as he
listened he became conscious of another noise be-
sides the brawling of the river and the ringing in his
feverish ears. It was like the stir of horses and the
creaking of harness, as though a carriage with an
impatient team had been brought up upon the road
before the courtyard gate. At such an hour, upon
this rough and dangerous pass, the supposition was
no better than absurd ; and Will dismissed it from
his mind, and resumed his seat upon the arbour
chair ; and sleep closed over him again like running
water. He was once again awakened by the dead
miller's call, thinner and more spectral than before ;
and once again he heard the noise of an equipage
upon the road. And so thrice and four times, the
same dream, or the same fancy, presented itself to his
senses : until at length, smiling to himself as when
one humours a nervous child, he proceeded towards
the gate to set his uncertainty at rest.
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WILL O' THE MILL
From the arbour to the gate was no great distance,
and yet it took Will some time ; it seemed as if the
dead thickened around him in the court, and crossed
his path at every step. For, first, he was suddenly
surprised by an overpowering sweetness of helio-
tropes ; it was as if his garden had been planted with
this flower from end to end, and the hot, damp
night had drawn forth all their perfumes in a breath.
Now the heliotrope had been Marjory's favourite
flower, and since her death not one of them had ever
been planted in Will's ground.
' I must be going crazy,' he thought. * Poor
Marjory and her heliotropes ! '
And with that he raised his eyes towards the
window that had once been hers. If he had been
bewildered before, he was now almost terrified ; for
there was a light in the room ; the window was an
orange oblong as of yore ; and the corner of the blind
was lifted and let fall as on the night when he stood
and shouted to the stars in his perplexity. The
illusion only endured an instant ; but it left him
somewhat unmanned, rubbing his eyes and staring
at the outline of the house and the black night be-
hind it. While he thus stood, and it seemed as if
he must have stood there quite a long time, there
came a renewal of the noises on the road : and he
turned in time to meet a stranger, who was ad-
vancing to meet him across the court. There was
something like the outline of a great carriage dis-
cernible on the road behind the stranger, and, above
that, a few black pine-tops, like so many plumes.
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WILL O' THE MILL
' Master AVill ? ' asked the new-comer, in brief
military fashion.
' That same, sir,' answered Will. * Can I do any-
thing to serve you ? '
' I have heard you much spoken of, Master
Will,' returned the other ; ' much spoken of, and
well. And though I have both hands full of
business, I wish to drink a bottle of wine with
you in your arbour. Before I go, I shall introduce
myself. '
Will led the way to the trellis, and got a lamp
lighted and a bottle uncorked. He was not alto-
gether unused to such complimentary interviews,
and hoped little enough from this one, being schooled
by many disappointments. A sort of cloud had
settled on his wits and prevented him from re-
membering the strangeness of the hour. He moved
like a person in his sleep ; and it seemed as if the
lamp caught fire and the bottle came uncorked with
the facility of thought. Still, he had some curiosity
about the appearance of his visitor, and tried in vain
to turn the light into his face ; either he handled
the lamp clumsily, or there was a dimness over his
eyes ; but he could make out little more than a
shadow at table with him. He stared and stared at
this shadow, as he wiped out the glasses, and began
to feel cold and strange about the heart. The silence
weighed upon him, for he could hear nothing now,
not even the river, but the drumming of his own
arteries in his ears.
' Here 's to you,' said the stranger roughly.
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WILL O' THE MILL
' Here is my service, sir/ replied Will, sipping his
wine, which somehow tasted oddly.
• I understand you are a very positive fellow,'
pursued the stranger.
Will made answer with a smile of some satisfac-
tion and a little nod.
* So am I,' continued the other ; ' and it is the
delight of my heart to tramp on people's corns. I
will have nobody positive but myself; not one. I
have crossed the whims, in my time, of kings and
generals and great artists. And what would you
say,' he went on, ' if I had come up here on purpose
to cross yours ? '
Will had it on his tongue to make a sharp re-
joinder ; but the politeness of an old innkeeper pre-
vailed ; and he held his peace and made answer with
a civil gesture of the hand.
' I have,' said the stranger. ' And if I did not
hold you in a particular esteem, I should make no
words about the matter. It appears you pride your-
self on staying where you are. You mean to stick
by your inn. Now I mean you shall come for a turn
with me in my barouche ; and before this bottle 's
empty, so you shall.'
1 That would be an odd thing, to be sure,' replied
Will, with a chuckle. 'Why, sir, I have grown here
like an old oak-tree ; the devil himself could hardly
root me up : and for all I perceive you are a very
entertaining old gentleman, I would wager you
another bottle you lose your pains with me.'
The dimness of Will's eyesight had been increasing
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WILL O' THE MILL
all this while ; but he was somehow conscious of a
sharp and chilling scrutiny which irritated and yet
overmastered him.
' You need not think,' he broke out suddenly, in
an explosive, febrile manner that startled and alarmed
himself, ' that I am a stay-at-home because I fear
anything under God. God knows I am tired enough
of it all ; and when the time comes for a longer
journey than ever you dream of, I reckon I shall find
myself prepared.'
The stranger emptied his glass and pushed it away
from him. He looked down for a little, and then,
leaning over the table, tapped Will three times upon
the forearm with a single finger. ' The time has
come ! ' he said solemnly.
An ugly thrill spread from the spot he touched.
The tones of his voice were dull and startling, and
echoed strangely in Will's heart.
' I beg your pardon,' he said, with some discom-
posure. ' What do you mean ? '
' Look at me, and you will find your eyesight
swim. Raise your hand ; it is dead-heavy. This is
your last bottle of wine, Master Will, and your last
night upon the earth.'
' You are a doctor ? ' quavered Will.
' The best that ever was,' replied the other ; ' for
I cure both mind and body with the same prescrip-
tion. I take away all pain and I forgive all sins ;
and where my patients have gone wrong in life, I
smooth out all complications and set them free again
upon their feet.'
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WILL O' THE MILL
' I have no need of you,' said Will.
' A time comes for all men, Master Will,' replied
the doctor, ' when the helm is taken out of their
hands. For you, because you were prudent and
quiet, it has been long of coming, and you have had
long to discipline yourself for its reception. You
have seen what is to be seen about your mill ; you
have sat close all your days like a hare in its form ;
but now that is at an end ; and,' added the doctor,
getting on his feet, ' you must arise and come with
me.'
' You are a strange physician,' said Will, looking
steadfastly upon his guest.
' I am a natural law,' he replied, ' and people call
me Death.'
' Why did you not tell me so at first ? ' cried Will.
'• I have been waiting for you these many years.
Give me your hand, and welcome.'
* Lean upon my arm,' said the stranger, ' for
already your strength abates. Lean on me as heavily
as you need ; for though I am old I am very strong.
It is but three steps to my carriage, and there all
your trouble ends. Why, Will,' he added, ' I have
been yearning for you as if you were my own son ;
and of all the men that ever I came for in my long
days, 1 have come for you most gladly. I am
caustic, and sometimes offend people at first sight ;
but I am a good friend at heart to such as you.'
' Since Marjory was taken,' returned Will, ' I de-
clare before God you were the only friend I had to
look for."
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WILL O' THE MILL
So the pair went arm-in-arm across the courtyard.
One of the servants awoke about this time and
heard the noise of horses pawing before he dropped
asleep again ; all down the valley that night there
was a rushing as of a smooth and steady wind de-
scending towards the plain ; and when the world
rose next morning, sure enough Will o' the Mill
had gone at last upon his travels.
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MARKHEIM
' Yes,' said the dealer, ' our windfalls are of various
kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I
touch a dividend on my superior knowledge. Some
are dishonest,' and here he held up the candle, so
that the light fell strongly on his visitor, ' and in that
case,' he continued, ' I profit by my virtue.'
Markheim had but just entered from the daylight
streets, and his eyes had not yet grown familiar with
the mingled shine and darkness in the shop. At
these pointed words, and before the near presence of
the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.
The dealer chuckled. 'You come to me on
Christmas Day,' he resumed, ' when you know that I
am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make
a point of refusing business. Well, you will have
to pay for that ; you will have to pay for my loss of
time, when I should be balancing my books ; you
will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that
I remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the
essence of discretion, and ask no awkward questions ;
but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he
has to pay for it' The dealer once more chuckled ;
219
MARKHEIM
and then, changing to his usual business voice,
though still with a note of irony, ' You can give, as
usual, a clear account of how you came into the
possession of the object ? ' he continued. ' Still your
uncle's cabinet ? A remarkable collector, sir ! '
And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood
almost on tip-toe, looking over the top of his gold
spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of
disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of
infinite pity, and a touch of horror.
'This time,' said he, 'you are in error. I have
not come to sell, but to buy. I have no curios to
dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to the wains-
cot ; even were it still intact, I have done well on
the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to
it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity
itself. I seek a Christinas present for a lady,' he
continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the
speech he had prepared ; ' and certainly I owe you
every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small
a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday ;
I must produce my little compliment at dinner ; and,
as you very well know, a rich marriage is not a thing
to be neglected.'
There followed a pause, during which the dealer
seemed to weigh this statement incredulously. The
ticking of many clocks among the curious lumber of
the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near
thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.
' Well, sir,' said the dealer, ' be it so. You are an
old customer after all ; and if, as you say, you have
220
MARKHEIM
the chance of a good marriage, far be it from me to
be an obstacle. — Here is a nice thing for a lady
now,' he went on, ' this hand-glass— fifteenth-century,
warranted ; comes from a good collection, too ; but
I reserve the name, in the interests of my customer,
who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew
and sole heir of a remarkable collector. '
The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and
biting voice, had stooped to take the object from its
place ; and, as he had done so, a shock had passed
through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a
sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the
face. It passed as swiftly as it came, and left no
trace beyond a certain trembling of the hand that
now received the glass.
'A glass,' he said hoarsely, and then paused, and
repeated it more clearly. ' A glass ? For Christ-
mas ? Surely not ? '
'And why not?' cried the dealer. 'Why not a
glass ? '
Markheim was looking upon him with an indefin-
able expression. ' You ask me why not ? ' he said.
' Why, look here — look in it — look at yourself! Do
you like to see it ? No ! nor I — nor any man. '
The little man had jumped back when Markheim
had so suddenly confronted him with the mirror ;
but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on
hand, he chuckled. ' Your future lady, sir, must be
pretty hard-favoured,' said he.
' I ask you,' said Markheim, 'for a Christmas pre-
sent, and you give me this — this damned reminder of
221
MARKHEIM
years, and sins and follies — this hand-conscience.
Did you mean it ? Had you a thought in your
mind ? Tell me. It will be better for you if you
do. Come, tell me about yourself. I hazard a
guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable
man ? '
The dealer looked closely at his companion. It
was very odd, Markheim did not appear to be laugh-
ing ; there was something in his face like an eager
sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.
' What are you driving at ? ' the dealer asked.
' Not charitable ? ' returned the other gloomily.
' Not charitable ? not pious ; not scrupulous ; unlov-
ing, unbeloved ; a hand to get money, a safe to keep
it. Is that all ? Dear God, man, is that all ? '
' I will tell you what it is,' began the dealer, with
some sharpness, and then broke off again into a
chuckle. ' But I see this is a love-match of yours,
and you have been drinking the lady's health.'
' Ah ! ' cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity.
' Ah, have you been in love ? Tell me about that.'
' I,' cried the dealer. ' I in love ! I never had the
time, nor have I the time to-day for all this non-
sense. — Will you take the glass ? '
' Where is the hurry ? ' returned Markheim. ■ It
is very pleasant to stand here talking ; and life is so
short and insecure that I would not hurry away from
any pleasure — no, not even from so mild a one as
this. We should rather cling, cling to what little
we can get, like a man at a cliff's edge. Every
second is a cliff, if you think upon it — a cliff a mile
222
MARKHEIM
high — high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of
every feature of humanity. Hence it is best to talk
pleasantly. Let us talk of each other : why should
we wear this mask ? Let us be confidential. Who
knows ? — we might become friends.'
' I have just one word to say to you,' said the
dealer. * Either make your purchase or walk out of
my shop ! '
' True, true,' said Markheim. ' Enough fooling.
To business. Show me something else.'
The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace
the glass upon the shelf, his thin blond hair falling
over his eyes as he did so. Markheim moved a
little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his
greatcoat ; he drew himself up and filled his lungs ;
at the same time many different emotions were
depicted together on his face — terror, horror, and
resolve, fascination and a physical repulsion ; and
through a haggard lift of his upper lip his teeth
looked out.
'This, perhaps, may suit,' observed the dealer:
and then, as he began to re-arise, Markheim bounded
from behind upon his victim. The long, skewer-like
dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled like
a hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then
tumbled on the floor in a heap.
Time had some score of small voices in that shop,
some stately and slow, as was becoming to their
great age ; others garrulous and hurried. All these
told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tick-
ings. Then the passage of a lad's feet, heavily
223
MARKHEIM
running on the pavement, broke in upon these
smaller voices and startled Markheim into the con-
sciousness of his surroundings. He looked about
him awfully. The candle stood on the counter, its
flame solemnly wagging in a draught ; and by that
inconsiderable movement the whole room was filled
with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea : the
tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of darkness
swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces
of the portraits and the china gods changing and
wavering like images in water. The inner door
stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows
with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.
From these fear-stricken rovings Markheim's eyes
returned to the body of his victim, where it lay
both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and
strangely meaner than in life. In these poor,
miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer
lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to
see it, and, lo ! it was nothing. And yet, as he
gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood
began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie ;
there was none to work the cunning hinges or direct
the miracle of locomotion — there it must lie till it
was found. Found ! ay, and then ? Then would
this dead flesh lift up a cry that would ring over
England, and fill the world with the echoes of pur-
suit Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy.
' Time was that when the brains were out,' he
thought; and the first word struck into his mind.
Time, now that the deed was accomplished — time,
224
MARKHEIM
which had closed for the victim, had become instant
and momentous for the slayer.
The thought was yet in his mind when, first one
and then another, with every variety of pace and
voice — one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret,
another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a
waltz — the clocks began to strike the hour of three
in the afternoon.
The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that
dumb chamber staggered him. He began to bestir
himself, going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered
by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by
chance reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of
home design, some from Venice or Amsterdam, he
saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were an
army of spies ; his own eyes met and detected him ;
and the sound of his own steps, lightly as they fell,
vexed the surrounding quiet. And still, as he con-
tinued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with
a sickening iteration, of the thousand faults of his
design. He should have chosen a more quiet hour ;
he should have prepared an alibi ; he should not have
used a knife ; he should have been more cautious,
and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not
killed him ; he should have been more bold, and
killed the servant also ; he should have done all
things otherwise : poignant regrets, weary, incessant
toiling of the mind to change what was unchange-
able, to plan what was now useless, to be the ar-
chitect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and
behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurry-
8— p 225
MARKHEIM
ing of rats in a deserted attic, rilled the more remote
chambers of his brain with riot ; the hand of the
constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his
nerves would jerk like a hooked fish ; or he beheld,
in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows,
and the black coffin.
Terror of the people in the street sat down before
his mind like a besieging army. It was impossible,
he thought, but that some rumour of the struggle
must have reached their ears and set on edge their
curiosity ; and now, in all the neighbouring houses,
he divined them sitting motionless and with uplifted
ear — solitary people, condemned to spend Christmas
dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now
startlingly recalled from that tender exercise ; happy
family parties, struck into silence round the table,
the mother still with raised finger : every degree and
age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, pry-
ing and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to
hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could
not move too softly ; the clink of the tall Bohemian
goblets rang out loudly like a bell ; and alarmed by
the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop
the clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition
of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeared
a source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze
the passer-by ; and he would step more boldly, and
bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and
imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements of a
busy man at ease in his own house.
But he was now so pulled about by different alarms
226
MARKHEIM
that, while one portion of his mind was still alert and
cunning, another trembled on the brink of lunacy.
One hallucination in particular took a strong hold
on his credulity. The neighbour hearkening with
white face beside his window, the passer-by arrested
by a horrible surmise on the pavement — these could
at worst suspect, they could not know ; through the
brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could
penetrate. But here, within the house, was he alone ?
He knew he was ; he had watched the servant set
forth sweethearting, in her poor best, ' out for the
day ' written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he
was alone, of course ; and yet, in the bulk of empty
house above him, he could surely hear a stir of
delicate footing — he was surely conscious, inexplic-
ably conscious, of some presence. Ay, surely ; to
every room and corner of the house his imagination
followed it ; and now it was a faceless thing, and
yet had eyes to see with ; and again it was a shadow
of himself; and yet again behold the image of the
dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and hatred.
At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at
the open door which still seemed to repel his eyes.
The house was tall, the skylight small and dirty, the
day blind with fog ; and the light that filtered down
to the ground story was exceedingly faint and showed
dimly on the threshold of the shop. And yet, in that
strip of doubtful brightness, did there not hang
wavering a shadow ?
Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial
gentleman began to beat with a staff on the shop-
227
MARKHEIM
door, accompanying his blows with shouts and
railleries in which the dealer was continually called
upon by name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced
at the dead man. But no ! he lay quite still ; he
was fled away far beyond ear-shot of these blows and
shoutings ; he was sunk beneath seas of silence ;
and his name, which would once have caught his
notice above the howling of a storm, had become an
empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman
desisted from his knocking and departed.
Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to
be done, to get forth from this accusing neighbour-
hood, to plunge into a bath of London multitudes,
and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of
safety and apparent innocence — his bed. One visitor
had come : at any moment another might follow and
be more obstinate. To have done the deed, and yet
not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a
failure. The money, that was now Markheim's con-
cern ; and as a means to that, the keys.
He glanced over his shoulder at the open door ;
where the shadow was still lingering and shivering ;
and with no conscious repugnance of the mind, yet
with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of
his victim. The human character had quite de-
parted. Like a suit half-stuffed with bran, the limbs
lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor ; and
yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and
inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have
more significance to the touch. He took the body
by the shoulders and turned it on its back. It was
228
MARKHEIM
strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they
had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The
face was robbed of all expression ; but it was as
pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood
about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the
one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back,
upon the instant, to a certain fair-day in a fishers'
village : a grey day, a piping wind, a crowd upon
the street, the blare of brasses, the booming of
drums, the nasal voice of a ballad-singer ; and a boy
going to and fro, buried over-head in the crowd and
divided between interest and fear, until, coming out
upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth
and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed,
garishly coloured : Brownrigg with her apprentice ;
the Mannings with their murdered guest ; Weare
in the death-grip of Thurtell ; and a score besides
of famous crimes. The thing was as clear as an
illusion ; he was once again that little boy ; he was
looking once again, and with the same sense of
physical revolt, at these vile pictures ; he was still
stunned by the thumping of the drums. A bar of
that day's music returned upon his memory ; and at
that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a
breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints,
w r hich he must instantly resist and conquer.
He judged it more prudent to confront than to
flee from these considerations ; looking the more
hardily in the dead face, bending his mind to realise
the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a
while ago that face had moved with every change of
229
MARKHEIM
sentiment, that pale mouth had spoken, that body
had been all on fire with governable energies ; and
now, and by his act, that piece of life had been
arrested, as the horologist, with interjected finger,
arrests the beating of the clock. So he reasoned in
vain ; he could rise to no more remorseful conscious-
ness ; the same heart which had shuddered before
the painted effigies of crime looked on its reality un-
moved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for one who
had been endowed in vain with all those faculties
that can make the world a garden of enchantment,
one who had never lived and who was now dead.
But of penitence, no, not a tremor.
With that, shaking himself clear of these con-
siderations, he found the keys and advanced towards
the open door of the shop. Outside, it had begun to
rain smartly ; and the sound of the shower upon the
roof had banished silence. Like some dripping
cavern, the chambers of the house were haunted by
an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled
with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim
approached the door, he seemed to hear, in answer
to his own cautious tread, the steps of another foot
withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpi-
tated loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's
weight of resolve upon his muscles, and drew back
the door.
The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the
bare floor and stairs ; on the bright suit of armour
posted, halbert in hand, upon the landing : and on
the dark wood-carvings, and framed pictures that
230
MARKHEIM
hung- against the yellow panels of the wainscot. So
loud was the beating of the rain through all the
house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be dis-
tinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps
and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the
distance, the chink of money in the counting, and
the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared
to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the
cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes.
The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to
the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted
and begirt by presences. He heard them moving
in the upper chambers ; from the shop he heard the
dead man getting to his legs ; and as he began with
a great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly
before him and followed stealthily behind. If he
were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly he would
possess his soul ! And then again, and hearkening
with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself for that
unresting sense which held the outposts and stood
a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned
continually on his neck ; his eyes, which seemed
starting from their orbits, scouted on every side, and
on every side were half-rewarded as with the tail of
something nameless vanishing. The four-and-twenty
steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.
On that first story, the doors stood ajar, three of
them like three ambushes, shaking his nerves like the
throats of cannon. He could never again, he felt, be
sufficiently immured and fortified from men's observ-
ing eyes ; he longed to be home, girt in by walls,
231
MARKHEIM
buried among bedclothes, and invisible to all but God.
And at that thought he wondered a little, recollect-
ing tales of other murderers and the fear they were
said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not
so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of nature,
lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they
should preserve some damning evidence of his crime.
He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious
terror, some scission in the continuity of man's ex-
perience, some wilful illegality of nature. He played
a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating
consequence from cause ; and what if nature, as
the defeated tyrant overthrew the chess-board, should
break the mould of their succession ? The like had
befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter
changed the time of its appearance. The like might
befall Markheim : the solid walls might become
transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees
in a glass hive ; the stout planks might yield under
his foot like quicksands and detain him in their
clutch ; ay, and there were soberer accidents that
might destroy him : if, for instance, the house should
fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim ;
or the house next door should fly on fire, and the
firemen invade him from all sides. These things he
feared ; and, in a sense, these things might be called
the hands of God reached forth against sin. But
about God himself he was at ease : his act was
doubtless exceptional, but so were his excuses, which
God knew ; it was there, and not among men, that
he felt sure of justice.
232
MARKHEIM
When he had got safe into the drawing-room, and
shut the door behind him, he was aware of a respite
from alarms. The room was quite dismantled, un-
carpeted besides, and strewn with packing-cases and
incongruous furniture ; several great pier-glasses, in
which he beheld himself at various angles, like an
actor on a stage ; many pictures, framed and un-
framed, standing with their faces to the wall ; a fine
Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and a
great old bed, with tapestry hangings. The Avindows
opened to the floor ; but by great good fortune the
lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this
concealed him from the neighbours. Here, then,
Markheim drew in a packing-case before the cabinet,
and began to search among the keys. It was a long
business, for there were many ; and it was irksome
besides ; for, after all, there might be nothing in the
cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the close-
ness of the occupation sobered him. With the tail
of his eye he saw the door — even glanced at it from
time to time directly, like a besieged commander,
pleased to verify the good estate of his defences.
But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling in
the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently,
on the other side, the notes of a piano were wakened
to the music of a hymn, and the voices of many
children took up the air and words. How stately,
how comfortable was the melody ! How fresh the
youthful voices ! Markheim gave ear to it smilingly,
as he sorted out the keys ; and his mind was
thronged with answerable ideas and images ; church-
233
MARKHEIM
going children and the pealing of the high organ ;
children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers
on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy
and cloud-navigated sky ; and then, at another
cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the
somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel
voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to re-
call), and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim
lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.
And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he
was startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire,
a bursting gush of blood, went over him, and then
he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted
the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand
was laid upon the knob, and the lock clicked, and
the door opened.
Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect
he knew not, whether the dead man walking, or the
official ministers of human justice, or some chance
witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the
gallows. But when a face was thrust into the aper-
ture, glanced round the room, looked at him, nodded
and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and then
withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his
fear broke loose from his control in a hoarse cry.
At the sound of this the visitant returned.
' Did you call me ? ' he asked pleasantly, and
with that he entered the room and closed the door
behind him.
Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his
eyes. Perhaps there was a film upon his sight, but
234
MARKHEIM
the outlines of the new-comer seemed to change and
waver like those of the idols in the wavering candle-
light of the shop ; and at times he thought he knew
him ; and at times he thought he bore a likeness to
himself; and always, like a lump of living terror,
there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing
was not of the earth and not of God.
And yet the creature had a strange air of the com-
monplace, as he stood looking on Markheim with a
smile ; and when he added : ' You are looking for
the money, I believe ? ' it was in the tones of every-
day politeness.
Markheim made no answer.
' I should warn you,' resumed the other, ' that the
maid has left her sweetheart earlier than usual and
will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim be found in
this house, I need not describe to him the con-
sequences.'
1 You know me ? ' cried the murderer.
The visitor smiled. 'You have long been a
favourite of mine,' he said ; ' and I have long ob-
served and often sought to help you.'
' What are you ? ' cried Markheim, ' the devil ? '
'AYhat I may be,' returned the other, 'cannot
affect the service I propose to render you.'
' It can,' cried Markheim ; ' it does ! Be helped
by you ? No, never ; not by you ! You do not
know me yet ; thank God, you do not know me ! '
' I know you,' replied the visitant, with a sort of
kind severity, or rather firmness. ' I know you to
the soul.'
235
MARKHEIM
' Know me ! ' cried Markheim. ' Who can do so ?
My life is but a travesty and slander on myself. I
have lived to belie my nature. All men do ; all men
are better than this disguise, that grows about and
stifles them. You see each dragged away by life,
like one whom bravos have seized and muffled in a
cloak. If they had their own control — if you could
see their faces, they would be altogether different,
they would shine out for heroes and saints ! I am
worse than most ; myself is more overlaid ; my
excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the
time, I could disclose myself.'
' To me ? ' inquired the visitant.
' To you before all,' returned the murderer. ' I
supposed you were intelligent. I thought — since you
exist — you would prove a reader of the heart. And
yet you would propose to judge me by my acts !
Think of it ; my acts ! I was born and I have lived
in a land of giants ; giants have dragged me by the
wrists since I was born out of my mother — the
giants of circumstance. And you would judge me
by my acts ! But can you not look within ? Can
you not understand that evil is hateful to me?
Can you not see within me the clear writing of
conscience, never blurred by any wilful sophistry,
although too often disregarded ? Can you not read
me for a thing that surely must be common as
humanity — the unwilling sinner ? '
'All this is very feelingly expressed,' was the
reply, ' but it regards me not. These points of con-
sistency are beyond my province, and I care not in
236
MARKHEIM
the least by what compulsion you may have been
dragged away, so as you are but carried in the right
direction. But time flies ; the servant delays, look-
ing in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on
the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer ;
and remember, it is as if the gallows itself was
striding towards you through the Christmas streets !
Shall I help you ; I, who know all ? Shall I tell
you where to find the money ? '
' For what price ? ' asked Markheim.
' I offer you the service for a Christmas gift,'
returned the other.
Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a
kind of bitter triumph. ' No,' said he, ' I will take
nothing at your hands ; if I were dying of thirst,
and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my
lips, I should find the courage to refuse. It may be
credulous, but I will do nothing to commit myself
to evil.'
' I have no objection to a deathbed repentance,'
observed the visitant.
* Because you disbelieve their efficacy ! ' Markheim
cried.
' I do not say so,' returned the other ; ' but I look
on these things from a different side, and when the
life is done my interest falls. The man has lived to
serve me, to spread black looks under colour of
religion, or to sow tares in the wheat-field, as you do,
in a course of weak compliance with desire. Now
that he draws so near to his deliverance, he can add
but one act of service — to repent, to die smiling, and
237
MARKHEIM
thus to build up in confidence and hope the more
timorous of my surviving followers. I am not so
hard a master. Try me. Accept my help. Please
yourself in life as you have done hitherto ; please
yourself more amply, spread your elbows at the
board ; and when the night begins to fall and the
curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for your greater
comfort, that you will find it even easy to compound
your quarrel with your conscience, and to make a
truckling peace with God. I came but now from
such a deathbed, and the room was full of sincere
mourners, listening to the man's last words : and
when I looked into that face, which had been set
as a flint against mercy, I found it smiling with
hope.'
' And do you, then, suppose me such a creature ? '
asked Markheim. ' Do you think I have no more
generous aspirations than to sin, and sin, and sin,
and, at the last, sneak into heaven ? My heart rises
at the thought. Is this, then, your experience of
mankind? or is it because you find me with red
hands that you presume such baseness ? and is this
crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the
very springs of good ? '
* Murder is to me no special category,' replied the
other. ' All sins are murder, even as all life is war.
I behold your race, like starving mariners on a raft,
plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and feed-
ing on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the
moment of their acting ; I find in all that the last
consequence is death ; and to my eyes, the pretty
238
B
MARKHEIM
maid who thwarts her mother with such taking
graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly
with human gore than such a murderer as yourself.
Do I say that I follow sins ? I follow virtues also ;
they differ not by the thickness of a nail, they are
both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil,
for which I live, consists not in action but in char-
acter. The bad man is dear to me ; not the bad act,
whose fruits, if we could follow them far enough
down the hurtling cataract of the ages, might yet be
found more blessed than those of the rarest virtues.
And it is not because you have killed a dealer, but
because you are Markheim, that I offer to forward
your escape.'
' I will lay my heart open to you,' answered
Markheim. 'This crime on which you find me is
my last. On my way to it I have learned many
lessons ; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson.
Hitherto I have been driven with revolt to what I
would not ; I was a bond-slave to poverty, driven
and scourged. There are robust virtues that can
stand in these temptations ; mine was not so : I had
a thirst of pleasure. But to-day, and out of this
deed, I pluck both warning and riches — both the
power and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become
in all things a free actor in the world ; I begin to see
myself all changed, these hands the agents of good,
this heart at peace. Something comes over me out
of the past ; something of what I have dreamed on
Sabbath evenings to the sound of the church organ,
of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble
239
MARKHEIM
books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother.
There lies my life ; I have wandered a few years, but
now I see once more my city of destination.'
' You are to use this money on the Stock Ex-
change, I think ? ' remarked the visitor ; ' and there,
if I mistake not, you have already lost some
thousands ? '
' Ah,' said Markheim, ' but this time I have a sure
thing.'
' This time, again, you will lose,' replied the visitor
quietly.
' Ah, but I keep back the half ! ' cried Markheim.
' That also you will lose,' said the other.
The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. ' Well,
then, what matter ? ' he exclaimed. ' Say it be lost,
say I am plunged again in poverty, shall one part of
me, and that the worse, continue until the end to
override the better ? Evil and good run strong in
me, haling me both ways. I do not love the one
thing, I love all. 1 can conceive great deeds, renun-
ciations, martyrdoms ; and though I be fallen to
such a crime as murder, pity is no stranger to my
thoughts. I pity the poor ; who knows their trials
better than myself? I pity and help them ; I prize
love, I love honest laughter ; there is no good thing
nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart.
And are my vices only to direct my life, and my
virtues to lie without effect, like some passive
lumber of the mind ? Not so ; good, also, is a
spring of acts.'
But the visitant raised his finger. ' For six-and-
240
MARKHEIM
thirty years that you have been in this world,' said
he, 'through many changes of fortune and varieties
of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. Fif-
teen years ago you would have started at a theft.
Three years back you would have blenched at the
name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any
cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil ? —
five years from now I shall detect you in the fact !
Downward, downward, lies your way ; nor can any-
thing but death avail to stop you.'
' It is true,' Markheim said huskily, ' I have in
some degree complied with evil. But it is so with
all : the very saints, in the mere exercise of living,
grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their
surroundings.'
' I will propound to you one simple question,' said
the other ; ' and as you answer, I shall read to you
your moral horoscope. You have grown in many
things more lax ; possibly you do right to be so ; and
at any account, it is the same with all men. But
granting that, are you in any one particular, however
trifling, more difficult to please with your own con-
duct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein ? '
1 In any one ? ' repeated Markheim, with an
anguish of consideration. ' No,' he added, with
despair, 'in none ! I have gone down in all.'
' Then,' said the visitor, ' content yourself with
what you are, for you will never change ; and the
words of your part on this stage are irrevocably
written down.'
Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed
8 — q 241
MARKHEIM
it was the visitor who first broke the silence. ' That
being so,' he said, ' shall I show you the money ? '
' And grace ? ' cried Markheim.
' Have you not tried it ? ' returned the other.
' Two or three years ago, did I not see you on the
platform of revival meetings, and was not your voice
the loudest in the hymn ? '
' It is true,' said Markheim ; ' and I see clearly
what remains for me by way of duty. I thank you
for these lessons from my soul ; my eyes are opened,
and I behold myself at last for what I am.'
At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell
rang through the house ; and the visitant, as though
this were some concerted signal for which he had
been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour.
' The maid ! ' he cried. ' She has returned, as I
forewarned you, and there is now before you one
more difficult passage. Her master, you must say,
is ill ; you must let her in, with an assured but rather
serious countenance — no smiles, no over-acting, and
1 promise you success ! Once the girl within, and
the door closed, the same dexterity that has already
rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last
danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the
whole evening — the whole night, if needful— to ran-
sack the treasures of the house and to make good
your safety. This is help- that comes to you with
the mask of danger. Up ! ' lie cried ; ' up, friend ;
your life hangs trembling in the scales : up, and
act! '
Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. ' If
242
MARKHEIM
I be condemned to evil acts,' he said, ' there is still
one door of freedom open — I can cease from action.
If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though
I be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small
temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place
myself beyond the reach of all. My love of good is
damned to barrenness ; it may, and let it be ! But
I have still my hatred of evil ; and from that, to your
galling disappointment, you shall see that I can draw
both energy and courage.'
The features of the visitor began to undergo a
wonderful and lovely change : they brightened and
softened with a tender triumph, and, even as they
brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim
did not pause to watch or understand the trans-
formation. He opened the door and went down-
stairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past
went soberly before him ; he beheld it as it Avas,
ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as chance-
medley— a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed
it, tempted him no longer ; but on the farther side
he perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused
in the passage, and looked into the shop, where
the candle still burned by the dead body. It was
strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed
into his mind, as he stood gazing. And then the
bell once more broke out into impatient clamour.
He confronted the maid upon the threshold with
something like a smile.
'You had better go for the police,' said he: 'I
have killed your master.'
243
THRAWN JANET
The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister
of the moorland parish of Balweary, in the vale of
Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to
his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life,
without relative or servant or any human company,
in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging
Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features,
his eye was wild, scared, and uncertain ; and when
he dwelt, in private admonitions, on the future of
the impenitent, it seemed as if his eye pierced
through the storms of time to the terrors of eternity.
Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves
against the season of the Holy Communion, were
dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon
on 1st Peter v. and 8th, ' The devil as a roaring lion,'
on the Sunday after every seventeenth of August,
and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that
text both by the appalling nature of the matter and
the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children
were frightened into fits, and the old looked more
than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of
those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse
244
THRAWN JANET
itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among
some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on
the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish
hill-tops rising towards the sky, had begun, at a very
early period of Mr. Souliss ministry, to be avoided
in the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon
their prudence ; and guidmen sitting at the clachan
alehouse shook their heads together at the thought
of passing late by that uncanny neighbourhood.
There was one spot, to be more particular, which
was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood
between the high-road and the water of Dule, with
a gable to each ; its back was towards the kirktown
of Balweary, nearly half a mile away ; in front of it,
a bare garden, hedged with thorn, occupied the land
between the river and the road. The house was
two stories high, with two large rooms on each. It
opened not directly on the garden, but on a cause-
wayed path, or passage, giving on the road on the
one hand, and closed on the other by the tall willows
and elders that bordered on the stream. And it was
this strip of causeway that enjoyed among the young
parishioners of Balweary so infamous a reputation.
The minister walked there often after dark, some-
times groaning aloud in the instancy of his unspoken
prayers ; and when he was from home, and the
manse door was locked, the more daring schoolboys
ventured, with beating hearts, to ' follow my leader '
across that legendary spot.
This atmosphere of terror, surrounding, as it did,
a man of God of spotless character and orthodoxy,
245
THRAWN JANET
was a common cause of wonder and subject of inquiry
among the few strangers who were led by chance or
business into that unknown, outlying country. But
many even of the people of the parish were ignorant
of the strange events which had marked the first year
of Mr. Soulis's ministrations ; and among those who
were better informed, some were naturally reticent,
and others shy of that particular topic. Now and
again, only, one of the older folk would warm into
courage over his third tumbler, and recount the
cause of the minister's strange looks and solitary life.
Fifty years syne, when Mr. Soulis cam' first into
Ba' weary, he was still a young man — a callant, the
folk said— fu' o' book-learnin' an' grand at the
exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man,
wi' nae leevin' experience in religion. The younger
sort were greatly taken wi' his gifts an' his gab ; but
auld, concerned, serious men and women were moved
even to prayer for the young man, whom they took
to be a self-deceiver, an' the parish that was like to
be sae ill-supplied. It was before the days o' the
Moderates — weary fa' them ; but ill things are like
guid — they baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a
time ; an' there were folk even then that said the
Lord had left the college professors to their ain
devices, an' the lads that went to study wi' them
wad hae done mair an' better sittin' in a peat-bog,
like their forebears o' the persecution, wi' a Bible
under their oxter an' a speerit o' prayer in their
heart. There was nae doubt, onyway, but that Mr.
246
THRAWN JANET
Sou lis had been ower Lang at the college. He was
careful an' troubled for mony things besides the ae
thing needful. He had a feck o' books wi' him —
mair than had ever been seen before in a' that pres-
bytery ; and a sair wark the carrier had wi' them,
for they were a' like to have smoored in the De'il's
Hag between this an' Kilmackerlie. They were
books o' divinity, to be sure, or so they cad them ;
but the serious were of opinion there was little service
for sae mony, when the hale o' God's Word would
gang in the neuk o' a plaid. Then he wad sit half
the day, an' half the nicht forbye, which was scant
decent— wri tin', nae less ; an' first, they were feared
he wad read his sermons ; an' syne it proved he was
writin' a book himsel', which was surely no' fittin' for
ane o' his years an' sma' experience.
Onyway it behoved him to get an auld, decent
wife to keep the manse for him an' see to his bit
denners ; an' he was recommended to an auld limmer
— Janet M 'Clour, they cad her — an' sae far left to
himsel' as to be ower persuaded. There was mony
advised him to the contrar, for Janet was mair than
suspeckit by the best folk in Ba' weary. Lang or
that, she had had a wean to a dragoon ; she hadna
come forrit 1 for maybe thretty year ; an' bairns had
seen her mumblin' to hersel' up on Key's Loan in
the gloamin', whilk was an unco time an' place for
a God-fearin' woman. Howsoever, it was the laird
himsel' that had first tauld the minister o' Janet ;
an' in thae days he wad hae gane a far gate to
1 ' To come forrit ' — to offer oneself as a communicant.
247
THRAWN JANET
pleesure the laird. When folk tauld him that Janet
was sib to the de'il, it was a' superstition by his way
o' it ; an' when they cast up the Bible to him an'
the witch o' Endor, he wad threep it doun their
thrapples that thir days were a' gane by, an' the
de'il was mercifully restrained.
Weel, when it got about the clachan that Janet
M'Clour was to be servant at the manse, the folk
were fair mad wi' her an' him thegither; an' some
o' the guidwives had nae better to dae than get
round her door-cheeks and chairge her wi' a' that
was ken't again' her, frae the sodger's bairn to John
Tamson's twa kye. She was nae great speaker ; folk
usually let her gang her ain gate, an' she let them
gang theirs, wi' neither Fair-guid-een nor Fair-guid-
day : but when she buckled to, she had a tongue to
deave the miller. Up she got, an' there wasna an
auld story in Ba'weary but she gart somebody lowp
for it that day ; they couldna say ae thing but she
could say twa to it ; till, at the hinder end, the guid-
wives up and claught haud o' her, an' clawed the
coats aff her back, an' pu'd her doun the clachan to
the water o' Dule, to see if she were a witch or no,
soom or droun. The carline skirled till ye could
hear her at the Hangin' Shaw, an' she focht like
ten ; there was mony a guidw r ife bure the mark o'
her neist day an' mony a lang day after ; an' just in
the hettest o' the collieshangie, wha suld come up
(for his sins) but the new minister !
' Women,' said he (and he had a grand voice), ' I
charge you in the Lord's name to let her go.'
248
THRAWN JANET
Janet ran to him — she was fair wud wi' terror —
an' clang to him, an' prayed him, for Christ's sake,
save her frae the cummers ; an' they, for their pairt,
tank! him a' that was ken't, an' maybe mair.
' Woman,' says he to Janet, ' is this true ? '
' As the Lord sees me,' says she, ' as the Lord
made me, no a word o't. Forbye the bairn,' says
she, ' I ve been a decent woman a' my days.'
' Will you,' says Mr. Soulis, ' in the name of God,
and before me, His unworthy minister, renounce the
devil and his works ? '
Weel, it wad appear that when he askit that, she
gave a girn that fairly frichtit them that saw her, an'
they could hear her teeth play dirl thegither in her
chafts ; but there was naething for 't but the ae way
or the ither ; an' Janet lifted up her hand an' re-
nounced the de'il before them a'.
'And now,' says Mr. Soulis to the guidwives,
' home with ye, one and all, and pray to God for His
forgiveness.'
An' he gied Janet his arm, though she had little
on her but a sark, an' took her up the clachan to
her ain door like a leddy o' the land ; an' her
screighin' an' laughin' as was a scandal to be heard.
There were mony grave folk lang ower their
prayers that nicht ; but when the morn cam' there
was sic a fear fell upon a' Ba' weary that the bairns
hid theirsels, an' even the men-folk stood and keekit
frae their doors. For there was Janet comin' doun
the clachan — her or her likeness, nane could tell —
wi' her neck thrawn, an' her heid on ae side, like a
249
THRAWN JANET
body that lias been hangit, an' a girn on her face
like an unstreakit corp. By an' by they got used
wi' it, an' even speered at her to ken what was
wrang ; but frae that day forth she couldna speak
like a Christian woman, but slavered an' played
click wi' her teeth like a pair o' shears ; an' frae that
day forth the name o' God cam' never on her lips.
Whiles she wad try to say it, but it michtna be.
Them that kenned best said least ; but they never
gied that Thing the name o' Janet M'Clour ; for the
auld Janet, by their way o't, was in muckle hell that
day. But the minister was neither to haud nor to
bind ; he preached about naething but the folk's
cruelty that had gi'en her a stroke of the palsy ; he
skelpit the bairns that meddled her ; an' he had her
up to the manse that same nicht, an' d walled there
a' his lane wi' her under the Hangin' Shaw.
Weel, time gaed by : an' the idler sort com-
menced to think mair lichtly o' that black business.
The minister was weel thocht o' ; he was aye late
at the writing, folk wad see his can'le doon by the
Dule water after twal' at e'en ; an' he seemed
pleased wi' himsel' an' upsitten as at first, though
a'body could see that he was dwining. As for
Janet she cam' an' she gaed ; if she didna speak
muckle afore, it was reason she should speak less
then ; she meddled naebody ; but she was an eldritch
thing to see, an' nane wad hae mistrysted wi' her for
Ba' weary glebe.
About the end o' July there cam' a spell o' weather,
the like o't never was in that countryside ; it was
250
TIIRAWN JANET
lown an' liet an' heartless; the herds couldna win
up the Black Hill, the bairns were ower weariet to
play ; an' yet it was gousty too, wi' claps o' het wund
that rummled in the glens, and bits o' shouers that
slockened naething. We aye thocht it but to thun'er
on the morn ; but the morn cam', an' the morn's
morning, an' it was aye the same uncanny weather,
sair on folks and bestial. O' a' that were the waur,
nane suffered like Mr. Soulis ; he could neither sleep
nor eat, he tauld his elders ; an' when he wasna
writin' at his weary book, he wad be stravaguin' ower
a' the countryside like a man possessed, when a'body
else was blithe to keep caller ben the house.
Abune Hangin' Shaw, in the bield o' the Black
Hill, there 's a bit enclosed grund wi' an iron yett ;
an' it seems, in the auld days, that was the kirkyaird
o' Ba'weary, an' consecrated by the Papists before
the blessed licht shone upon the kingdom. It was
a great howff o' Mr. Soulis's, onyway ; there he
wad sit an' consider his sermons ; an' indeed it 's
a bieldy bit. Weel, as he cam' ower the wast end o'
the Black Hill ae day, he saw first twa, an' syne
fower, an' syne seeven corbie craws fleein' round an'
round abune the auld kirkyaird. They flew laigh
an' heavy, an' squawked to ither as they gaed ; an'
it was clear to Mr. Soulis that something had put
them frae their ordinar'. He wasna easy fleyed, an'
gaed straucht up to the wa's ; an' what suld he find
there but a man, or the appearance o' a man, sittin'
in the inside upon a grave. He was of a great
stature, an' black as hell, an' his e'en were singular
251
THRAWN JANET
to see. 1 Mr. Soulis had heard tell o' black men,
mony's the time ; but there was something unco
about this black man that daunted him. Het as he
was, he took a kind o' cauld grue in the marrow o'
his banes ; but up he spak for a' that ; an' says he :
' My friend, are you a stranger in this place ? ' The
black man answered never a word ; he got upon his
feet, an' begoud to hirsle to the wa' on the far side ;
but he aye lookit at the minister ; an' the minister
stood an' lookit back ; till a' in a meenit the black
man was ower the wa' an' rinnin' for the bield o' the
trees. Mr. Soulis, he hardly kenned why, ran after
him ; but he was fair forjeskit wi' his walk an' the
het, unhalesome weather ; an' rin as he likit, he got
nae mair than a glisk o' the black man amang the
birks, till he won doun to the foot o' the hillside,
an' there he saw him ance mair, gaun hap-step-an'-
lowp ower Dule water to the manse.
Mr. Soulis wasna weel pleased that this fearsome
gangrel suld mak' sae free wi' Ba'weary manse ; an'
he ran the harder, an', wet shoon, ower the burn, an'
up the walk ; but the deil a black man was there to
see. He stepped out upon the road, but there was
naebody there ; he gaed a' ower the gairden, but na,
nae black man. At the hinder end, an' a bit feared,
as was but natural, he lifted the hasp an' into the
manse ; an' there was Janet M'Clour before his een,
wi' her thrawn craig, an' nane sae pleased to see
1 It was a common belief iu Scotland that the devil appeared as a
black man. This appears in several witch trials, and I think iu Law's
Memorials, that delightful storehouse of the quaint and grisly.
252
THRAWN JANET
him. An' he aye minded sinsyne, when first he set
his een upon her, he had the same cauld and deidly
grue.
'Janet,' says he, ' have yon seen a black man ? '
' A black man ? ' quo' she. ' Save ns a' ! Ye 're
no wise, minister. There 's nae black man in a'
Ba' weary. '
But she didna speak plain, ye maun understand ;
but yam-yammered, like a powney wi' the bit in its
moo.
1 Weel,' says he, ' Janet, if there was nae black
man, I have spoken with the Accuser of the Brethren.'
An' he sat down like ane wi' a fever, an' his teeth
cluttered in his heid.
' Hoots,' says she, ' think shame to yonrsel',
minister ' ; an' gied him a drap brandy that she keept
aye by her.
Syne Mr. Soulis gaed into his study amang a' his
books. It's a lang, laigh, mirk chalmer, perishin'
cauld in winter, an' no' very dry even in the tap o'
the simmer, for the manse stands near the burn.
Sae doun he sat, an' thocht o' a' that had come an'
gane since he was in Ba'weary, an' his hame, an' the
days when he was a bairn an' ran daffin' on the
braes ; an' that black man aye ran in his heid like
the owercome o' a sang. Aye the mair he thocht,
the mair he thocht o' the black man. He tried the
prayer, an' the words wadna come to him ; an' he
tried, they say, to write at his book, but he could-
na mak' nae mair o' that. There was whiles he
thocht the black man was at his oxter, an' the swat
253
THRAWN JANET
stood upon him cauld as well-water ; an' there was
ither whiles, when he cam' to himsel' like a christened
bairn an' minded naething.
The upshot was that he gaed to the window an'
stood glowrin' at Dule water. The trees are unco
thick, an' the water lies deep an' black under the
manse ; an' there was Janet washin' the cla'es wi'
her coats kilted. She had her back to the minister,
an' he, for his pairt, hardly kenned what he was
lookin' at. Syne she turned round, an' shawed her
face ; Mr. Soulis had the same cauld grue as twice
that day afore, an' it was borne in upon him what
folk said, that Janet was deid lang syne, an' this was
a bogle in her clay-cauld flesh. He drew back a
pickle and he scanned her narrowly. She was tramp-
trampin' in the cla'es, croonin' to hersel' ; and eh !
Gude guide us, but it was a fearsome face. Whiles
she sang louder, but there was nae man born o'
woman that could tell the words o' her sang ; an'
whiles she lookit side-lang doun, but there was nae-
thing there for her to look at. There gaed a scunner
through the flesh upon his banes ; an' that was
Heeven's advertisement. But Mr. Soulis just blamed
himsel', he said, to think sae ill o' a puir, auld afflicted
wife that hadna a freend forbye himsel' ; an' he put
up a bit prayer for him an' her, an' drank a little
caller water — for his heart rose again' the meat — an'
gaed up to his naked bed in the gloamin'.
That was a nicht that has never been forgotten
in Ba' weary, the nicht o' the seeventeenth o' August
seeventcen hun'er' an' twal'. It had been het afore,
254
THRAWN JANET
as I hae said, but that nicht it was lietter than ever.
The sun gaed doun amang unco-lookin' clouds ; it
fell as mirk as the pit ; no' a star, no' a breath o'
wund ; ye couldna see your han' afore your face,
an' even the auld folk cuist the covers frae their
beds an' lay pechin' for their breath. Wi' a' that
he had upon his mind, it was gey an unlikely
Mr. Soulis wad get muckle sleep. He lay an' he
tummled ; the gude, caller bed that he got into
brunt his very banes ; whiles he slept, an' whiles he
waukened ; whiles he heard the time o' nicht, an'
whiles a tyke yowlin' up the muir, as if somebody
was deid ; whiles he thocht he heard bogles claverin'
in his lug, an' whiles he saw spunkies in the room.
He behoved, he judged, to be sick ; an' sick he was
— little he jaloosed the sickness.
At the hinder end he got a clearness in his mind,
sat up in his sark on the bed-side, an' fell thinkin'
ance mair o' the black man an' Janet. He couldna
weel tell how — maybe it was the cauld to his feet —
but it cam' in upon him wi' a spate that there was
some connection between thir twa, an' that either
or baith o' them were bogles. An' just at that
moment, in Janet's room, which was neist to his,
there cam' a stramp o' feet as if men were wars'lin',
an' then a loud bang ; an' then a wund gaed reish-
ling round the fower quarters o' the house ; an' then
a' was aince mair as seelent as the grave.
Mr. Soulis was feared for neither man nor deevil.
He got his tinder-box, an' lit a can'le, an' made three
steps o't ower to Janet's door. It was on the hasp,
255
THRAWN JANET
an' he pushed it open, an' keekit bauldly in. It
was a big room, as big as the minister's ain, an'
plenished wi' grand, auld, solid gear, for he had nae-
thing else. There was a fower-posted bed wi' auld
tapestry ; an' a braw cabinet o' aik, that was fu' o'
the minister's divinity books, an' put there to be out
o' the gate ; an' a wheen duds o' Janet's lying here
an' there about the floor. But nae Janet could Mr.
Soulis see ; nor ony sign o' a contention. In he
gaed (an' there 's few that wad hae followed him)
an' lookit a' round, an' listened. But there was nae-
thing to be heard, neither inside the manse nor in
a' Ba'weary parish, and naething to be seen but the
muckle shadows turnin' round the can'le. An' then
a' at aince the minister's heart played dunt an' stood
stock-still ; an' a cauld wund blew amang the hairs
o' his heid. Whaten a weary sicht was that for the
puir man's een ! For there was Janet hangin' frae a
nail beside the auld aik cabinet : her heid aye lay on
her shouther, her een were steekit, the tongue pro-
jected frae her mouth, an' her heels were twa feet
clear abune the floor.
' God forgive us all ! ' thocht Mr. Soulis ; ' poor
Janet 's dead.'
He cam' a step nearer to the corp ; an' then his
heart fair whammled in his inside. For, by what
cantrip it wad ill beseem a man to judge, she was
hingin' frae a single nail an' by a single wursted
thread for darnin' hose.
It's an awfu' thing to be your lane at nicht wi'
siccan prodigies o' darkness ; but Mr. Soulis was
256
THRAWN JANET
strong in the Lord. He turned an' gaed his ways
oot o' that room, an' lockit the door ahint him ; an'
step by step, doon the stairs, as heavy as leed ; an'
set doon the can'le on the table at the stairfoot.
He couldna pray, he couldna think, he was dreepin'
wi' caul' swat, an' naething could he hear but the
dunt-dunt-duntin' o' his ain heart. He micht maybe
hae stood there an hour, or maybe twa, he minded
sae little ; when a' of a sudden he heard a laigh,
uncanny steer upstairs ; a foot gaed to an' fro in the
chalmer whaur the corp was hingin' ; syne the door
was opened, though he minded weel that he had
lockit it ; an' syne there was a step upon the landin',
an' it seemed to him as if the corp was lookin' ower
the rail an' doun upon him whaur he stood.
He took up the can'le again (for he couldna want
the licht), an' as saftly as ever he could, gaed
straucht out o' the manse an' to the far end o' the
causeway. It was aye pit-mirk ; the flame o' the
can'le, when he set it on the grund, brunt steedy and
clear as in a room ; naething moved, but the Dule
water seepin' an' sabbin' doun the glen, an' yon
unhaly footstep that cam' ploddin' doun the stairs
inside the manse. He kenned the foot ower weel,
for it was Janet's ; an' at ilka step that cam' a wee
thing nearer, the caidd got deeper in his vitals. He
commended his soul to Him that made an' keepit
him ; ' and, O Lord,' said he, ' give me strength this
night to war against the powers of evil.'
By this time the foot was comin' through the
passage for the door ; he could hear a hand skirt
8— R 257
THRAWN JANET
alang the wa', as if the fearsome thing was feelin'
for its way. The saughs tossed an' maned thegither,
a lang sigh cam' ower the hills, the flame o' the
can'le was blawn aboot ; an' there stood the corp o'
Thrawn Janet, wi' her grogram goun an' her black
mutch, wi' the heid aye upon the shouther, an' the
girn still upon the face o't — leevin', ye wad hae
said — deid, as Mr. Soulis weel kenned — upon the
threshold o' the manse.
It 's a strange tiling that the saul o' man should
be that thirled into his perishable body ; but the
minister saw that, an' his heart didna break.
She didna stand there lang ; she began to move
again an' cam' slowly towards Mr. Soulis whaur he
stood under the saughs. A' the life o' his body, a'
the strength o' his speerit, were glowerin' frae his
een. It seemed she was gaun to speak, but wanted
words, an' made a sign wi' the left hand. There
cam' a clap o' wund, like a cat's fuff; oot gaed the
can'le, the saughs skreighed like folk ; an' Mr. Soulis
kenned that, live or die, this was the end o't.
' Witch, beldame, devil ! ' he cried, ' I charge you,
by the power of God, be gone — if you be dead, to
the grave — if you be damned, to hell.'
An' at that moment the Lord's ain hand out o'
the Heevens struck the Horror whaur it stood ; the
auld, deid, desecrated corp o' the witch-wife, sae
lang keepit frae th^ grave an' hirsled round by de'ils,
lowed up like a brunstane spunk an' fell in ashes to
the grund ; the thunder followed, peal on dirlin'
peal, the rairin' rain upon the back o' that; an' Mr.
25**
THRAWN JANET
Soulis lovvped through the garden hedge, an' ran,
wi' skelloch upon skelloch, for the clachan.
That same mornin' John Christie saw the Black
Man pass the Muckle Cairn as it was chappin' six ;
before eicht he gaed by the change-house at Knock-
dow ; an' no' lang after, Sandy M'Lellan saw liim
gaui) linkin' doun the braes frae Kihnackerlie.
There s little doubt but it was him that dwalled sae
lang in Janet's body ; but he was awa' at last ; an'
sinsyne the de'il has never fashed us in Ba'weary.
But it was a sair dispensation for the minister ;
lang, lang he lay ravin' in his bed ; an' frae that
hour to this he was the man ye ken the day.
259
OLALLA
' Now,' said the doctor, ' my part is done, and, I may
say, with some vanity, well done. It remains only
to get you out of this cold and poisonous city, and
to give you two months of a pure air and an easy
conscience. The last is your affair. To the first 1
think I can help you. It falls indeed rather oddly ;
it was but the other day the Padre came in from the
country ; and as he and I are old friends, although
of contrary professions, he applied to me in a matter
of distress among some of his parishioners. This
was a family — but you are ignorant of Spain, and
even the names of our grandees are hardly known to
you ; suffice it, then, that they were once great
people, and are now fallen to the brink of desti-
tution. Nothing now belongs to them but the
residencia, and certain leagues of desert mountain,
in the greater part of which not even a goat could
support life. But the house is a fine old place, and
stands at a great height among the hills, and most
salubriously ; and I had no sooner heard my friend's
tale than I remembered you. I told him I had a
wounded officer, wounded in the good cause, who
260
OLALLA
was now able to make a change ; and 1 proposed
that his friends should take you for a lodger.
Instantly the Padre's face grew dark, as I had
maliciously foreseen it would. It was out of the
question, he said. Then let them starve, said I,
for I have no sympathy with tatterdemalion pride.
Thereupon we separated, not very content with one
another ; but yesterday, to my wonder, the Padre
returned and made a submission : the difficulty, he
said, he had found upon inquiry to be less than he
had feared ; or, in other words, these proud people
had put their pride in their pocket. I closed with
the offer ; and, subject to your approval, I have
taken rooms for you in the residencia. The air of
these mountains will renew your blood ; and the
quiet in which you will there live is worth all the
medicines in the world.'
' Doctor,' said I, ' you have been throughout my
good angel, and your advice is a command. But
tell me, if you please, something of the family with
which I am to reside.'
' I am coming to that,' replied my friend ; ' and,
indeed, there is a difficulty in the way. These
beggars are, as I have said, of very high descent, and
swollen with the most baseless vanity ; they have
lived for some generations in a growing isolation,
drawing away, on either hand, from the rich who
had now become too high for them, and from the
poor, whom they still regarded as too low ; and even
to-day, when poverty forces them to unfasten their
door to a guest, they cannot do so without a most
261
OLALLA
ungracious stipulation. You are to remain, they
say, a stranger ; they will give you attendance, but
they refuse from the first the idea of the smallest
intimacy.'
I will not deny that I was piqued, and perhaps
the feeling strengthened my desire to go, for I was
confident that I could break down that barrier if I
desired. ' There is nothing offensive in such a
stipulation,' said I ; ' and I even sympathise with the
feeling that inspired it.'
' It is true, they have never seen you,' returned
the doctor politely ; ' and if they knew you were the
handsomest and the most pleasant man that ever
came from England (where I am told that handsome
men are common, but pleasant ones not so much so),
they would doubtless make you welcome with a
better grace. But since you take the thing so well,
it matters not. To me, indeed, it seems discourteous.
But you will find yourself the gainer. The family
will not much tempt you. A mother, a son, and
a daughter ; an old woman, said to be half-witted, a
country lout, and a country girl, who stands very
high with her confessor, and is, therefore,' chuckled
the physician, ' most likely plain ; there is not much
in that to attract the fancy of a dashing officer.'
' And yet you say they are high-born,' I objected.
' Well, as to that, I should distinguish,' returned
the doctor. ' The mother is ; not so the children.
The mother was the last representative of a princely
stock, degenerate both in parts and fortune. Her
father was not only poor, he was mad : and the girl
262
OLALLA
ran wild about the residencia till his death. Then,
much of the fortune having died with him, and the
family being quite extinct, the girl ran wilder than
ever, until at last she married, Heaven knows whom,
a muleteer some say, others a smuggler ; while there
are some who uphold there was no marriage at all,
and that Felipe and Olalla are bastards. The union,
such as it was, was tragically dissolved some years
ago ; but they live in such seclusion, and the country
at that time was in so much disorder, that the pre-
cise manner of the man's end is known only to the
priest — if even to him. '
' I begin to think I shall have strange experiences,'
said I.
' I would not romance, if I were you,' replied the
doctor; 'you will find, I fear, a very grovelling and
commonplace reality. Felipe, for instance, I have
seen. And what am I to say ? He is very rustic,
very cunning, very loutish, and, I should say, an
innocent ; the others are probably to match. No,
no, senor commandante, you must seek congenial
society among the great sights of our mountains ;
and in these at least, if you are at all a lover of
the works of nature, I promise you will not be dis-
appointed.'
The next day Felipe came for me in a rough
country cart, drawn by a mule ; and a little before
the stroke of noon, after I had said farewell to the
doctor, the innkeeper, and different good souls who
had befriended me during my sickness, we set forth
out of the city by the eastern gate, and began to
26^?
OLALLA
ascend into the Sierra. I had been so long a prisoner,
since I was left behind for dying after the loss of the
convoy, that the mere smell of the earth set me
smiling. The country through which we went was
wild and rocky, partially covered with rough woods,
now of the cork-tree, and now of the great Spanish
chestnut, and frequently intersected by the beds of
mountain torrents. The sun shone, the wind rustled
joyously ; and we had advanced some miles, and the
city had already shrunk into an inconsiderable knoll
upon the plain behind us, before my attention began
to be diverted to the companion of my drive. To
the eye, he seemed but a diminutive, loutish, well-
made country lad, such as the doctor had described,
mighty quick and active, but devoid of any culture ;
and this first impression was with most observers
final. What began to strike me was his familiar,
chattering talk ; so strangely inconsistent with the
terms on which I was to be received ; and partly
from his imperfect enunciation, partly from the
sprightly incoherence of the matter, so very difficult
to follow clearly without an effort of the mind. It
is true I had before talked with persons of a similar
mental constitution ; persons who seemed to live (as
he did) by the senses, taken and possessed by the
visual object of the moment and unable to discharge
their minds of that impression. His seemed to me
(as I sat, distantly giving ear) a kind of conversation
proper to drivers, who pass much of their time in
a great vacancy of the intellect and threading the
sights of a familiar country. But this was not the
264
OLALLA
case of Felipe ; by his own account, he was a home-
keeper ; ' I wish I was there now,' he said ; and
then, spying a tree by the wayside, he broke off to
tell me that he had once seen a crow among its
branches.
' A crow ? ' I repeated, struck by the ineptitude of
the remark, and thinking I had heard imperfectly.
But by this time he was already rilled with a new
idea ; hearkening with a rapt intentness, his head
on one side, his face puckered ; and he struck me
rudely, to make me hold my peace. Then he smiled
and shook his head.
' What did you hear? ' I asked.
' Oh, it is all right,' he said ; and began encourag-
ing his mule Avith cries that echoed unhumanly up
the mountain walls.
I looked at him more closely. He was superla-
tively well-built, light, and lithe and strong ; he
was well-featured ; his yellow eyes were very large,
though, perhaps, not very expressive ; take him alto-
gether, he was a pleasant-looking lad, and I had no
fault to find with him, beyond that he was of a dusky
hue, and inclined to hairyness ; two characteristics
that I disliked. It was his mind that puzzled, and
yet attracted me. The doctor's phrase — an innocent
— came back to me ; and I was wondering if that
were, after all, the true description, when the road
began to go down into the narrow and naked chasm
of a torrent. The waters thundered tumultuonsly
in the bottom ; and the ravine was filled full of the
sound, the thin spray, and the claps of wind, that
265
OLALLA
accompanied their descent. The scene was certainly
impressive ; but the road was in that part very
securely walled in ; the mule went steadily forward ;
and I was astonished to perceive the paleness of
terror in the face of my companion. The voice
of that wild river was inconstant, now sinking lower
as if in weariness, now doubling its hoarse tones ;
momentary freshets seemed to swell its volume,
sweeping down the gorge, raving and booming
against the barrier walls ; and I observed it was at
each of these accessions to the clamour that my
driver more particularly winced and blanched. Some
thoughts of Scottish superstition and the river-kelpie
passed across my mind ; I wondered if perchance the
like were prevalent in that part of Spain ; and turn-
ing to Felipe, sought to draw him out.
• What is the matter ? ' I asked.
' Oh, I am afraid,' he replied.
' Of what are you afraid ? ' I returned. ' This
seems one of the safest places on this very dangerous
road. '
' It makes a noise,' he said, with a simplicity of
awe that set my doubts at rest.
The lad was but a child in intellect ; his mind
was like his body, active and swift, but stunted in
development ; and I began from that time forth to
regard him with a measure of pity, and to listen at
first with indulgence, and at last even with pleasure,
to his disjointed babble.
By about four in the afternoon we had crossed
the summit of the mountain line, said farewell to the
266
OLALLA
western sunshine, and began to go down upon the
other side, skirting the edge of many ravines and
moving through the shadow of dusky woods. There
rose upon all sides the voice of falling water, not
condensed and formidable as in the gorge of the
river, but scattered and sounding gaily and musically
from glen to glen. Here, too, the spirits of my
driver mended, and he began to sing aloud in a
falsetto voice, and with a singular bluntness of musi-
cal perception, never true either to melody or key,
but wandering at will, and yet somehow with an
effect that was natural and pleasing, like that of the
song of birds. As the dusk increased, I fell more
and more under the spell of this artless warbling,
listening and waiting for some articulate air, and still
disappointed ; and when at last I asked him what it
was he sang — ' Oh,' cried he, ' I am just singing ! '
Above all, I was taken with a trick he had of un-
weariedly repeating the same note at little intervals ;
it was not so monotonous as you would think, or, at
least, not disagreeable ; and it seemed to breathe a
wonderful contentment with what is, such as we love
to fancy in the attitude of trees, or the quiescence of
a pool.
Night had fallen dark before we came out upon a
plateau, and drew up a little after, before a certain
lump of superior blackness which I could only
conjecture to be the residencia. Here my guide,
getting down from the cart, hooted and whistled
for a long time in vain ; until at last an old peasant
man came towards us from somewhere in the sur-
267
OLALLA
rounding dark, carrying a candle in his hand. By
the light of this I was able to perceive a great arched
doorway of a Moorish character : it was closed by
iron studded gates, in one of the leaves of which
Felipe opened a wicket. The peasant carried off
the cart to some out-building ; but my guide and
I passed through the wicket, which was closed again
behind us ; and, by the glimmer of the candle, passed
through a court, up a stone stair, along a section of
an open gallery, and up more stairs again, until we
came at last to the door of a great and somewhat
bare apartment. This room, which I understood
was to be mine, was pierced by three windows, lined
with some lustrous wood disposed in panels, and
carpeted with the skins of many savage animals. A
bright fire burned in the chimney, and shed abroad
a changeful flicker ; close up to the blaze there was
drawn a table, laid for supper ; and in the far end
a bed stood ready. I was pleased by these prepara-
tions, and said so to Felipe ; and he, with the same
simplicity of disposition that I had already remarked
in him, warmly re-echoed my praises. ' A fine
room,' he said ; ' a very fine room. And fire, too ;
fire is good ; it melts out the pleasure in your
bones. And the bed,' he continued, carrying over
the candle in that direction — ' see what fine sheets —
how soft, how smooth, smooth ' ; and he passed his
hand again and again over their texture, and then
laid down his head and rubbed his cheeks among
them with a grossness of content that somehow
offended me. I took the candle from his hand (for
268
OLALLA
I feared lie would set the bed on fire) and walked
back to the supper-table, where, perceiving a measure
of wine, I poured out a cup and called to him to
come and drink of it. He started to his feet at once
and ran to me with a strong expression of hope ; but
when he saw the wine he visibly shuddered.
' Oh no,' he said, ' not that ; that is for you. I
hate it.'
' Very well, Senor,' said I ; ' then I will drink to
your good health, and to the prosperity of your
house and family. Speaking of which,' I added,
after I had drunk, ' shall I not have the pleasure of
laying my salutations in person at the feet of the
Seriora, your mother ? '
But at these words all the childishness passed out
of his face, and was succeeded by a look of indescrib-
able cunning and secrecy. He backed away from
me at the same time, as though I were an animal
about to leap or some dangerous fellow with a
weapon, and when he had got near the door,
glowered at me sullenly with contracted pupils.
' No,' he said at last, and the next moment was
gone noiselessly out of the room ; and I heard his
footing die away downstairs as light as rainfall, and
silence closed over the house.
After I had supped I drew up the table nearer to
the bed and began to prepare for rest; but in the
new position of the light, I was struck by a picture
on the wall. It represented a woman, still young.
To judge by her costume and the mellow unity
which reigned over the canvas, she had long been
269
OLALLA
dead ; to judge by the vivacity of the attitude, the
eyes and the features, I might have been beholding
in a mirror the image of life. Her figure was very
slim and strong, and of a just proportion ; red tresses
lay like a crown over her brow ; her eyes, of a very
golden brown, held mine with a look ; and her face,
which was perfectly shaped, was yet marred by a
cruel, sullen, and sensual expression. Something in
both face and figure, something exquisitely intangible,
like the echo of an echo, suggested the features and
bearing of my guide ; and I stood a while, unplea-
santly attracted and wondering at the oddity of the
resemblance. The common, carnal stock of that
race, which had been originally designed for such
high dames as the one now looking on me from the
canvas, had fallen to baser uses, wearing country
clothes, sitting on the shaft and holding the reins of
a mule cart, to bring home a lodger. Perhaps an
actual link subsisted ; perhaps some scruple of the
delicate flesh that was once clothed upon with the
satin and brocade of the dead lady, now winced at
the rude contact of Felipe's frieze.
The first light of the morning shone full upon the
portrait, and, as I lay awake, my eyes continued to
dwell upon it with growing complacency ; its beauty
crept about my heart insidiously, silencing my
scruples one after another; and while I knew that
to love such a woman were to sign and seal one's
own sentence of degeneration, I still knew that, if
she were alive, I should love her. Day after day
the double knowledge of her wickedness and of my
270
OLALLA
weakness grew clearer. She came to be the heroine
of many day-dreams, in which her eyes led on to,
and sufficiently rewarded, crimes. She cast a dark
shadow on my fancy, and when I was out in the
free air of heaven, taking vigorous exercise and
healthily renewing the current of my blood, it was
often a glad thought to me that my enchantress
was safe in the grave, her wand of beauty broken,
her lips closed in silence, her philtre spilt. And yet
I had a half-lingering terror that she might not be
dead after all, but re-arisen in the body of some
descendant.
Felipe served my meals in my own apartment;
and his resemblance to the portrait haunted me.
At times it was not ; at times, upon some change of
attitude or flash of expression, it would leap out
upon me like a ghost. It was above all in his ill
tempers that the likeness triumphed. He certainly
liked me ; he was proud of my notice, which he
sought to engage by many simple and childlike
devices ; he loved to sit close before my fire, talking
his broken talk or singing his odd, endless, wordless
songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my
clothes with an affectionate manner of caressing that
never failed to cause in me an embarrassment of
which I was ashamed. But for all that, he was
capable of flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy
sullenness. At a word of reproof, I have seen him
upset the dish of which I was about to eat, and this
not surreptitiously, but with defiance ; and similarly
at a hint of inquisition. I was not unnaturally
271
OLALLA
curious, being in a strange place and surrounded by
strange people ; but at the shadow of a question he
shrank back, lowering and dangerous. Then it was
that, for a fraction of a second, this rough lad might
have been the brother of the lady in the frame.
But these humours were swift to pass ; and the
resemblance died along with them.
In these first days I saw nothing of any one but
Felipe, unless the portrait is to be counted ; and
since the lad was plainly of weak mind, and had
moments of passion, it may be wondered that I bore
his dangerous neighbourhood with equanimity. As
a matter of fact it was for some time irksome ; but
it happened before long that I obtained over him so
complete a mastery as set my disquietude at rest. .
It fell in this way. He was by nature slothful,
and much of a vagabond, and yet he kept by the
house, and not only waited upon my wants, but
laboured every day in the garden or small farm to
the south of the residencia. Here he would be
joined by the peasant whom I had seen on the night
of my arrival, and who dwelt at the far end of the
enclosure, about half a mile away, in a rude out-
house ; but it was plain to me that, of these two, it
was Felipe who did most ; and though 1 would
sometimes see him throw down his spade and go to
sleep among the very plants he had been digging,
his constancy and energy were admirable in them-
selves, and still more so since I was well assured
they were foreign to his disposition, and the fruit
of an ungrateful effort. But while I admired, I
272
OLALLA
wondered what had called forth in a lad so shuttlc-
witted this enduring sense of duty. How was it
sustained ? I asked myself, and to what length did
it prevail over his instincts ? The priest was possibly
his inspirer ; but the priest came one day to the
residencia. I saw him both come and go after an
interval of close upon an hour, from a knoll where I
was sketching, and all that time Felipe continued to
labour undisturbed in the garden.
At last, in a very unworthy spirit, I determined
to debauch the lad from his good resolutions, and,
waylaying him at the gate, easily persuaded him to
join me in a ramble. It was a fine day, and the
woods to which I led him were green and pleasant
and sweet-smelling, and alive with the hum of
insects. Here he discovered himself in a fresh char-
acter, mounting up to heights of gaiety that abashed
me, and displaying an energy and grace of move-
ment that delighted the eye. He leaped, he ran
round me in mere glee ; he would stop, and look and
listen, and seem to drink in the world like a cordial ;
and then he would suddenly spring into a tree with
one bound, and hang and gambol there like one at
home. Little as he said to me, and that of not
much import, I have rarely enjoyed more stirring
company; the sight of his delight was a continual
feast; the speed and accuracy of his movements
pleased me to the heart ; and I might have been so
thoughtlessly unkind as to make a habit of these
walks, had not chance prepared a very rude con-
clusion to my pleasure. By some swiftness or
8— s 273
OLALLA
dexterity the lad captured a squirrel in a tree top.
He was then some way ahead of me, but I saw him
drop to the ground and crouch there, crying aloud
for pleasure like a child. The sound stirred my
sympathies, it was so fresh and innocent ; but as I
bettered my pace to draw near, the cry of the squirrel
knocked upon my heart. I have heard and seen
much of the cruelty of lads, and above all, of
peasants ; but what I now beheld struck me into a
passion of anger. I thrust the fellow aside, plucked
the poor brute out of his hands, and with swift
mercy killed it. Then I turned upon the torturer,
spoke to him long out of the heat of my indignation,
calling him names at which he seemed to wither ;
and at length, pointing towards the residencia, bade
him begone and leave me, for I chose to walk with
men, not with vermin. He fell upon his knees, and,
the words coming to him with more clearness than
usual, poured out a stream of the most touching
supplications, begging me in mercy to forgive him,
to forget what he had done, to look to the future.
' Oh, I try so hard,' he said. ' Oh, commandante, bear
with Felipe this once ; he will never be a brute
again ! ' Thereupon, much more affected than I
cared to show, I suffered myself to be persuaded,
and at last shook hands with him and made it up.
But the squirrel, by way of penance, I made him
bury ; speaking of the poor thing's beauty, telling
him what pains it had suffered, and how base a thing
was the abuse of strength. ' See, Felipe,' said I,
' you are strong indeed ; but in my hands you are as
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helpless as that poor thing of the trees. Give me
your hand in mine. You cannot remove it. Now
suppose that I were cruel like you, and took a
pleasure in pain. I only tighten my hold, and see
how you suffer. ' He screamed aloud, his face
stricken ashy and dotted with needle-points of sweat;
and when I set him free, he fell to the earth and
nursed his hand and moaned over it like a baby.
But he took the lesson in good part ; and whether
from that, or from what I had said to him, or the
higher notion he now had of my bodily strength, his
original affection was changed into a dog-like,
adoring fidelity.
Meanwhile I gained rapidly in health. The resi-
dencia stood on the crown of a stony plateau ; on
every side the mountains hemmed it about; only
from the roof, where was a bartizan, there might be
seen, between two peaks, a small segment of plain,
blue with extreme distance. The air in these
altitudes moved freely and largely ; great clouds
congregated there, and were broken up by the wind
and left in tatters on the hill-tops ; a hoarse and yet
faint rumbling of torrents rose from all round ; and
one could there study all the ruder and more ancient
characters of nature in something of their pristine
force. I delighted from the first in the vigorous
scenery and changeful weather ; nor less in the
antique and dilapidated mansion where I dwelt. This
was a large oblong, flanked at two opposite corners
by bastion-like projections, one of which commanded
the door, while both were loopholed for musketry.
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OLALLA
The lower story was, besides, naked of windows, so
that the building, if garrisoned, could not be carried
without artillery. It enclosed an open court planted
with pomegranate trees. From this a broad flight
of marble stairs ascended to an open gallery, running
all round and resting towards the court on slender
pillars. Thence, again, several enclosed stairs led to
the upper stories of the house, which were thus
broken up into distinct divisions. The windows,
both within and without, were closely shuttered ;
some of the stonework in the upper parts had fallen ;
the roof, in one place, had been wrecked in one of
the flurries of wind which were common in these
mountains ; and the whole house, in the strong,
beating sunlight, and standing out above a grove of
stunted cork-trees, thickly laden and discoloured
with dust, looked like the sleeping palace of the
legend. The court, in particular, seemed the very
home of slumber. A hoarse cooing of doves haunted
about the eaves ; the winds were excluded, but when
they blew outside, the mountain dust fell here as
thick as rain, and veiled the red bloom of the
pomegranates ; shuttered windows and the closed
doors of numerous cellars, and the vacant arches of
the gallery, enclosed it ; and all day long the sun
made broken profiles on the four sides, and paraded
the shadow of the pillars on the gallery floor. At
the ground level there was, however, a certain pillared
recess, which bore the marks of human habitation.
Though it was open in front upon the court, it was
yet provided with a chimney, where a wood fire
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would be always prettily blazing ; and the tile floor
was littered with the skins of animals.
It was in this place that I first saw my hostess.
She had drawn one of the skins forward and sat in
the sun, leaning against a pillar. It was her dress
that struck me first of all, for it was rich and brightly
coloured, and shone out in that dusty courtyard with
something of the same relief as the flowers of the
pomegranates. At a second look it was her beauty
of person that took hold of me. As she sat back —
watching me, I thought, though with invisible eyes
— and wearing at the same time an expression of
almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she
showed a perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility
of attitude that were beyond a statue's. I took off
my hat to her in passing, and her face puckered with
suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in
the breeze ; but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I
went forth on my customary walk a trifle daunted,
her idol-like impassivity haunting me ; and when I
returned, although she was still in much the same
posture, I was half surprised to see that she had
moved as far as the next pillar, following the sun-
shine. This time, however, she addressed me with
some trivial salutation, civilly enough conceived, and
uttered in the same deep-chested, and yet indistinct
and lisping tones, that had already baffled the utmost
niceness of my hearing from her son. I answered
rather at a venture ; for not only did I fail to take
her meaning with precision, but the sudden disclosure
of her eyes disturbed me. They were unusually
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OLALLA
large, the iris golden like Felipe's, but the pupil at
that moment so distended that they seemed almost
black ; and what affected me was not so much their
size as (what was perhaps its consequence) the
singular insignificance of their regard. A look more
blankly stupid I have never met. My eyes dropped
before it even as I spoke, and I went on my way
upstairs to my own room, at once baffled and
embarrassed. Yet when I came there and saw the
face of the portrait, I was again reminded of the
miracle of family descent. My hostess was, indeed,
both older and fuller in person ; her eyes were of a
different colour ; her face, besides, was not only free
from the ill-significance that offended and attracted
me in the painting ; it was devoid of either good or
bad— a moral blank expressing literally naught. And
yet there was a likeness, not so much speaking as
immanent, not so much in any particular feature as
upon the whole. It should seem, I thought, as if
when the master set his signature to that grave
canvas, he had not only caught the image of one
smiling and false-eyed woman, but stamped the
essential quality of a race.
From that day forth, whether I came or went, I
was sure to find the Seiiora seated in the sun against
a pillar, or stretched on a rug before the fire ; only
at times she would shift her station to the top round
of the stone staircase, where she lay with the same
nonchalance right across my path. In all these days,
I never knew her to display the least spark of energy
beyond what she expended in brushing and re-brush-
278
OLALLA
ing her copious copper-coloured hair, or in lisping
out, in the rich and broken hoarseness of her voice,
her customary idle salutations to myself. These, I
think, were her two chief pleasures, beyond that of
mere quiescence. She seemed always proud of her
remarks, as though they had been witticisms : and,
indeed, though they were empty enough, like the
conversation of many respectable persons, and turned
on a very narrow range of subjects, they were never
meaningless or incoherent ; nay, they had a certain
beauty of their own, breathing, as they did, of her
entire contentment. Now she would speak of the
warmth, in which (like her son) she greatly delighted;
now of the flowers of the pomegranate trees, and
now of the white doves and long-winged swallows
that fanned the air of the court. The birds excited
her. As they raked the eaves in their swift flight,
or skimmed sidelong past her with a rush of wind,
she would sometimes stir, and sit a little up, and
seem to awaken from her doze of satisfaction. But
for the rest of her days she lay luxuriously folded on
herself and sunk in sloth and pleasure. Her in-
vincible content at first annoyed me, but I came
gradually to find repose in the spectacle, until at
last it grew to be my habit to sit down beside her
four times in the day, both coming and going, and
to talk with her sleepily, I scarce knew of what. I
had come to like her dull, almost animal neighbour-
hood ; her beauty and her stupidity soothed and
amused me. I began to find a kind of transcenden-
tal good sense in her remarks, and her unfathomable
279
OLALLA
good-nature moved me to admiration and envy.
The liking was returned ; she enjoyed my presence
half-unconsciously, as a man in deep meditation may
enjoy the babbling of a brook. I can scarce say she
brightened when I came, for satisfaction was written
on her face eternally, as on some foolish statue's ;
but I was made conscious of her pleasure by some
more intimate communication than the sight. And
one day, as I sat within reach of her on the marble
step, she suddenly shot forth one of her hands and
patted mine. The thing was done, and she was
back in her accustomed attitude, before my mind
had received intelligence of the caress ; and when I
turned to look her in the face I could perceive no
answerable sentiment. It was plain she attached no
moment to the act, and I blamed myself for my own
more uneasy consciousness.
The sight and (if I may so call it) the acquaintance
of the mother confirmed the view I had already taken
of the son. The family blood had been impoverished,
perhaps by long inbreeding, which I knew to be a
common error among the proud and the exclusive.
No decline, indeed, was to be traced in the body,
which had been handed down unimpaired in shape-
liness and strength ; and the faces of to-day were
struck as sharply from the mint, as the face of two
centuries ago that smiled upon me from the portrait.
But the intelligence (that more precious heirloom)
was degenerate ; the treasure of ancestral memory
ran low ; and it had required the potent, plebeian
crossing of a muleteer or mountain contrabandista
280
OLALLA
to raise what approached hebetude in the mother
into the active oddity of the son. Yet of the two,
it was the mother I preferred. Of Felipe, vengeful
and placable, full of starts and shyings, inconstant as
a hare, I could even conceive as a creature possibly
noxious. Of the mother I had no thoughts but
those of kindness. And indeed, as spectators are
apt ignorantly to take sides, I grew something of a
partisan in the enmity which I perceived to smoulder
between them. True, it seemed mostly on the
mother's part She would sometimes draw in her
breath as he came near, and the pupils of her vacant
eyes would contract as if with horror or fear. Her
emotions, such as they were, were much upon the
surface and readily shared ; and this latent repulsion
occupied my mind, and kept me wondering on what
grounds it rested, and whether the son was certainly
in fault.
I had been about ten days in the residencia, when
there sprang up a high and harsh wind, carrying
clouds of dust. It came out of malarious lowlands,
and over several snowy sierras. The nerves of those
on whom it blew were strung and jangled ; their eyes
smarted with the dust ; their legs ached under the
burthen of their body ; and the touch of one hand
upon another grew to be odious. The wind, besides,
came down the gullies of the hills and stormed about
the house with a great, hollow buzzing and whistling
that was wearisome to the ear and dismally depress-
ing to the mind. It did not so much blow in gusts
as with the steady sweep of a waterfall, so that there
281
OLALLA
was no remission of discomfort while it blew. But
higher up on the mountain it was probably of a more
variable strength, with accesses of fury ; for there
came down at times a far-off wailing, infinitely
grievous to hear ; and at times, on one of the high
shelves or terraces, there would start up, and then
disperse, a tower of dust, like the smoke of an
explosion.
I no sooner awoke in bed than I was conscious of
the nervous tension and depression of the weather,
and the effect grew stronger as the day proceeded.
It was in vain that I resisted ; in vain that I set
forth upon my customary morning's walk ; the irra-
tional, unchanging fury of the storm had soon beat
down my strength and wrecked my temper ; and I
returned to the residencia, glowing with dry heat,
and foul and gritty with dust. The court had a
forlorn appearance ; now and then a glimmer of sun
fled over it ; now and then the wind swooped down
upon the pomegranates, and scattered the blossoms,
and set the window shutter clapping on the wall.
In the recess the Senora was pacing to and fro with
a flushed countenance and bright eyes ; I thought,
too, she was speaking to herself, like one in anger.
But when I addressed her with my customary salu-
tation, she only replied by a sharp gesture and
continued her walk. The weather had distempered
even this impassive creature; and as I went on
upstairs I was the less ashamed of my own dis-
composure.
All day the wind continued ; and I sat in my room
282
OLALLA
and made a feint of reading, or walked up and down,
and listened to the riot overhead. Night fell, and I
had not so much as a candle. I began to long for
some society, and stole down to the court. It was
now plunged in the blue of the first darkness ; but
the recess was redly lighted by the fire. The wood
had been piled high, and was crowned by a shock of
flames, which the draught of the chimney brandished
to and fro. In this strong and shaken brightness the
Senora continued pacing from wall to wall with dis-
connected gestures, clasping her hands, stretching
forth her arms, throwing back her head as in appeal
to heaven. In these disordered movements the
beauty and grace of the woman showed more clearly;
but there was a light in her eye that struck on me
unpleasantly ; and when I had looked on a while in
silence, and seemingly unobserved, I turned tail as
I had come, and groped my way back again to my
own chamber.
By the time Felipe brought my supper and lights,
my nerve was utterly gone ; and, had the lad been
such as I was used to seeing him, I should have kept
him (even by force, had that been necessary) to take
off the edge from my distasteful solitude. But on
Felipe, also, the wind had exercised its influence.
He had been feverish all day ; now that the night
had come he was fallen into a low and tremulous
humour that reacted on my own. The sight of his
scared face, his starts and pallors and sudden hearken-
ings, unstrung me ; and when he dropped and broke
a dish, I fairly leaped out of my seat.
283
OLALLA
' I think we are all mad to-day/ said I, affecting
to laugh.
' It is the black wind,' he replied dolefully. ' You
feel as if you must do something, and you don't know
what it is.'
I noted the aptness of the description ; but,
indeed, Felipe had sometimes a strange felicity in
rendering into words the sensations of the body.
' And your mother, too,' said I ; ' she seems to feel
this weather much. Do you not fear she may be
unwell ? '
He stared at me a little, and then said, ' No,'
almost defiantly ; and the next moment, carrying his
hand to his brow, cried out lamentably on the wind
and the noise that made his head go round like a
millwheel. ' Who can be well ? ' he cried ; and,
indeed, I could only echo his question, for I was
disturbed enough myself.
I went to bed early, wearied with day-long rest-
lessness ; but the poisonous nature of the wind, and
its ungodly and unintermittent uproar, would not
suffer me to sleep. I lay there and tossed, my nerves
and senses on the stretch. At times I would doze,
dream horribly, and wake again ; and these snatches
of oblivion confused me as to time. But it must
have been late on in the night, when I was suddenly
startled by an outbreak of pitiable and hateful cries.
I leaped from my bed, supposing I had dreamed ;
but the cries still continued to fill the house, cries
of pain, I thought, but certainly of rage also, and so
savage and discordant that they shocked the heart.
284
OLALLA
It was no illusion ; some living thing, some lunatic
or some wild animal, was being foully tortured. The
thought of Felipe and the squirrel flashed into my
mind, and I ran to the door, but it had been locked
from the outside ; and I might shake it as I pleased,
I was a fast prisoner. Still the cries continued.
Now they would dwindle down into a moaning that
seemed to be articulate, and at these times I made
sure they must be human ; and again they would
break forth and fill the house with ravings worthy
of hell. I stood at the door and gave ear to them,
till at last they died away. Long after that, I still
lingered and still continued to hear them mingle in
fancy with the storming of the wind ; and when at
last I crept to my bed, it was with a deadly sickness
and a blackness of horror on my heart.
It was little wonder if I slept no more. Why had
I been locked in ? What had passed ? Who was
the author of these indescribable and shocking cries ?
A human being ? It was inconceivable. A beast ?
The cries were scarce quite bestial ; and what animal,
short of a lion or a tiger, could thus shake the solid
walls of the residencia ? And while I was thus
turning over the elements of the mystery, it came
into my mind that I had not yet set eyes upon the
daughter of the house. What was more probable
than that the daughter of the Senora, and the sister
of Felipe, should be herself insane ? Or, what more
likely than that these ignorant and half-witted people
should seek to manage an afflicted kinswoman by
violence ? Here was a solution ; and yet when I
285
OLALLA
called to mind the cries (which I never did without
a shuddering chill) it seemed altogether insufficient :
not even cruelty could wring such cries from mad-
ness. But of one thing I was sure : I could not live
in a house where such a thing was half conceivable,
and not probe the matter home and, if necessary,
interfere.
The next day came, the wind had blown itself out,
and there was nothing to remind me of the business
of the night. Felipe came to my bedside with
obvious cheerfulness ; as I passed through the court
the Seiiora was sunning herself with her accustomed
immobility ; and when I issued from the gateway
I found the whole face of nature austerely smiling,
the heavens of a cold blue, and sown with great
cloud islands, and the mountain-sides mapped forth
into provinces of light and shadow. A short walk
restored me to myself, and renewed within me the
resolve to plumb this mystery ; and when, from the
vantage of my knoll, I had seen Felipe pass forth to
his labours in the garden, I returned at once to the
residencia to put my design in practice. The Seiiora
appeared plunged in slumber ; I stood a while and
marked her, but she did not stir ; even if my design
were indiscreet, I had little to fear from such a
guardian ; and turning away, I mounted to the
gallery and began my exploration of the house.
All morning I went from one door to another,
and entered spacious and faded chambers, some
rudely shuttered, some receiving their full charge of
daylight, all empty and unhomely. It was a rich
286
OLALLA
house, on which Time had breathed his tarnish and
dust had scattered disillusion. The spider swung
there ; the bloated tarantula scampered on the
cornices ; ants had their crowded highways on the
floor of halls of audience ; the big and foul fly, that
lives on carrion and is often the messenger of death,
had set up his nest in the rotten woodwork, and
buzzed heavily about the rooms. Here and there a
stool or two, a couch, a bed, or a great carved chair
remained behind, like islets on the bare floors, to
testify of man's bygone habitation ; and everywhere
the walls were set with the portraits of the dead.
I could judge, by these decaying effigies, in the house
of what a great and what a handsome race I was
then wandering. Many of the men wore orders on
their breasts and had the port of noble offices ; the
women were all richly attired ; the canvases, most of
them, by famous hands. But it was not so much
these evidences of greatness that took hold upon my
mind, even contrasted, as they were, with the present
depopulation and decay of that great house. It was
rather the parable of family life that I read in this
succession of fair faces and shapely bodies. Never
before had I so realised the miracle of the continued
race, the creation and re-creation, the weaving and
changing and handing down of fleshly elements.
That a child should be born of its mother, that it
should grow and clothe itself (we know not how)
with humanity, and put on inherited looks, and turn
its head with the manner of one ascendant, and offer
its hand with the gesture of another, are wonders
287
OLALLA
dulled for us by repetition. But in the singular
unity of look, in the common features and common
bearing, of all these painted generations on the walls
of the residencia, the miracle started out and looked
me in the face. And an ancient mirror falling
opportunely in my way, I stood and read my own
features a long while, tracing out on either hand
the filaments of descent and the bonds that knit me
with my family.
At last, in the course of these investigations, I
opened the door of a chamber that bore the marks
of habitation. It was of large proportions and faced
to the north, where the mountains were most wildly
figured. The embers of a fire smouldered and
smoked upon the hearth, to which a chair had been
drawn close. And yet the aspect of the chamber
was ascetic to the degree of sternness : the chair was
uncushioned ; the floor and walls were naked ; and
beyond the books which lay here and there in some
confusion, there was no instrument of either work or
pleasure. The sight of books in the house of such
a family exceedingly amazed me ; and I began with a
great hurry, and in momentary fear of interruption,
to go from one to another and hastily inspect their
character. They were of all sorts, devotional, his-
torical, and scientific, but mostly of a great age and
in the Latin tongue. Some I could see to bear the
marks of constant study ; others had been torn across
and tossed aside as if in petulance or disapproval.
Lastly, as I cruised about that empty chamber, I
espied some papers written upon with pencil on a
288
OLALLA
table near the window. An unthinking curiosity led
me to take one up. It bore a copy of verses, very
roughly metred in the original Spanish, and which I
may render somewhat thus —
' Pleasure approached with pain and shame,
Grief with a wreath of lilies came.
Pleasure showed the lovely sun ;
Jesu dear, how sweet it shone !
Grief with her worn hand pointed on,
Jesu dear, to thee !'
Shame and confusion at once fell on me ; and,
laying down the paper, I beat an immediate retreat
from the apartment. Neither Felipe nor his mother
could have read the books nor written these rough
but feeling verses. It was plain I had stumbled
with sacrilegious feet into the room of the daughter
of the house. God knows, my own heart most
sharply punished me for my indiscretion. The
thought that I had thus secretly pushed my way
into the confidence of a girl so strangely situated,
and the fear that she might somehow come to hear
of it, oppressed me like guilt. I blamed myself
besides for my suspicions of the night before ; won-
dered that I should ever have attributed those
shocking cries to one of whom I now conceived as of
a saint, spectral of mien, wasted with maceration,
bound up in the practices of a mechanical devotion,
and dwelling in a great isolation of soul with her
incongruous relatives ; and as I leaned on the balus-
trade of the gallery and looked down into the bright
8— t 289
OLALLA
close of pomegranates and at the gaily dressed and
somnolent woman, who just then stretched herself
and delicately licked her lips as in the very sensuality
of sloth, my mind swiftly compared the scene with
the cold chamber looking northward on the moun-
tains, where the daughter dwelt.
That same afternoon, as I sat upon my knoll, I
saw the Padre enter the gates of the residencia. The
revelation of the daughter's character had struck
home to my fancy, and almost blotted out the
horrors of the night before ; but at sight of this
worthy man the memory revived. I descended,
then, from the knoll, and making a circuit among
the woods, posted myself by the wayside to await
his passage. As soon as he appeared I stepped
forth and introduced myself as the lodger of the
residencia. He had a very strong, honest counten-
ance, on which it was easy to read the mingled
emotions with which he regarded me, as a foreigner,
a heretic, and yet one who had been wounded for
the good cause. Of the family at the residencia he
spoke with reserve, and yet with respect. I men-
tioned that I had not yet seen the daughter, where-
upon he remarked that that was as it should be, and
looked at me a little askance. Lastly, I plucked up
courage to refer to the cries that had disturbed me in
the night. He heard me out in silence, and then
stopped and partly turned about, as though to mark
beyond doubt that he was dismissing me.
' Do you take tobacco-powder ? ' said he, offering
his snuff-box ; and then, when I had refused, ' I am
290
OLALLA
an old man,' he added, ' and I may be allowed to
remind you that you are a guest'
' I have, then, your authority,' I returned, firmly
enough, although I flushed at the implied reproof, ' to
let things take their course, and not to interfere ? '
He said ' Yes,' and with a somewhat uneasy salute
turned and left me where I was. But he had done
two things : he had set my conscience at rest, and
he had awakened my delicacy. I made a great
effort, once more dismissed the recollections of the
night, and fell once more to brooding on my saintly
poetess. At the same time, I could not quite
forget that I had been locked in, and that night
when Felipe brought me my supper I attacked him
warily on both points of interest.
' I never see your sister,' said I casually.
' Oh no,' said he ; ' she is a good, good girl,' and
his mind instantly veered to something else.
* Your sister is pious, I suppose ? ' I asked in the
next pause.
' Oh ! ' he cried, joining his hands with extreme
fervour, 'a saint; it is she that keeps me up.'
' You are very fortunate,' said I, ' for the most of
us, I am afraid, and myself among the number, are
better at going down.'
' Senor,' said Felipe earnestly, ' I would not say
that. You should not tempt your angel. If one
goes down, where is he to stop ? '
' Why, Felipe,' said I, ' I had no guess you were a
preacher, and I may say a good one ; but I suppose
that is your sister's doing ? '
291
OLALLA
He nodded at me with round eyes.
' Well, then,' I continued, ' she has doubtless
reproved you for your sin of cruelty ? '
' Twelve times ! ' he cried ; for this was the phrase
by which the odd creature expressed the sense of
frequency. 'And I told her you had done so — I
remembered that,' he added proudly — ' and she was
pleased.'
'Then, Felipe,' said I, 'what were those cries that
I heard last night ? for surely they were cries of some
creature in suffering.'
' The wind,' returned Felipe, looking in the fire.
I took his hand in mine, at which, thinking it to
be a caress, he smiled with a brightness of pleasure
that came near disarming my resolve. But I trod
the weakness down. ' The wind,' I repeated ; ' and
yet I think it was this hand,' holding it up, 'that
had first locked me in.' The lad shook visibly, but
answered never a word. ' Well,' said I, ' I am a
stranger and a guest. It is not my part either to
meddle or to judge in your affairs ; in these you shall
take your sister's counsel, which I cannot doubt to
be excellent. But in so far as concerns my own I
will be no man's prisoner, and I demand that key.'
Half an hour later my door was suddenly thrown
open, and the key tossed ringing on the floor.
A day or two after I came in from a walk a little
before the point of noon. The Senora was lying
lapped in slumber on the threshold of the recess ; the
pigeons dozed below the eaves like snowdrifts ; the
house was under a deep spell of noontide quiet ; and
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OLALLA
only a wandering and gentle wind from the moun-
tain stole round the galleries, rustled among the
pomegranates, and pleasantly stirred the shadows.
Something in the stillness moved me to imitation,
and I went very lightly across the court and up the
marble staircase. My foot was on the topmost
round, when a door opened, and I found myself face
to face with Olalla. Surprise transfixed me ; her
loveliness struck to my heart ; she glowed in the
deep shadow of the gallery, a gem of colour; her
eyes took hold upon mine and clung there, and
bound us together like the joining of hands ; and the
moments we thus stood face to face, drinking each
other in, were sacramental and the wedding of souls.
I know not how long it was before I awoke out of a
deep trance, and, hastily bowing, passed on into the
upper stair. She did not move, but followed me
with her great, thirsting eyes ; and as I passed out
of sight it seemed to me as if she paled and faded.
In my own room, I opened the window and looked
out, and could not think what change had come
upon that austere field of mountains that it should
thus sing and shine under the lofty heaven. I had
seen her — Olalla ! And the stone crags answered,
Olalla ! and the dumb, unfathomable azure answered,
Olalla ! The pale saint of my dreams had vanished
for ever ; and in her place I beheld this maiden on
whom God had lavished the richest colours and the
most exuberant energies of life, whom he had made
active as a deer, slender as a reed, and in whose
great eyes he had lighted the torches of the soul.
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OLALLA
The thrill of her young life, strung like a wild
animal's, had entered into me ; the force of soul that
had looked out from her eyes and conquered mine,
mantled about my heart and sprang to my lips in
singing. She passed through my veins : she was
one with me.
I will not say that this enthusiasm declined ;
rather my soul held out in its ecstasy as in a strong
castle, and was there besieged by cold and sorrowful
considerations. I could not doubt but that I loved
her at first sight, and already with a quivering ardour
that was strange to my experience. What then was
to follow ? She was the child of an afflicted house,
the Senora's daughter, the sister of Felipe ; she bore
it even in her beauty. She had the lightness and
swiftness of the one, swift as an arrow, light as dew ;
like the other, she shone on the pale background of
the world with the brilliancy of flowers. I could
not call by the name of brother that half-witted lad,
nor by the name of mother that immovable and
lovely thing of flesh, whose silly eyes and perpetual
simper now recurred to my mind like something
hateful. And if I could not marry, what then ?
She was helplessly unprotected ; her eyes, in that
single and long glance which had been all our inter-
course, had confessed a weakness equal to my own ;
but in my heart I knew her for the student of the
cold northern chamber, and the writer of the sorrowful
lines ; and this was a knowledge to disarm a brute.
To flee was more than I could find courage for ; but
I registered a vow of unsleeping circumspection.
294
OLALLA
As I turned from the window, my eyes alighted
on the portrait. It had fallen dead, like a candle
after sunrise ; it followed me with eyes of paint. I
knew it to be like, and marvelled at the tenacity of
type in that declining race ; but the likeness was
swallowed up in difference. I remembered how it
had seemed to me a thing unapproachable in the life,
a creature rather of the painter's craft than of the
modesty of nature, and I marvelled at the thought,
and exulted in the image of Olalla. Beauty I had
seen before, and not been charmed, and I had been
often drawn to women, who were not beautiful
except to me ; but in Olalla all that I desired and
had not dared to imagine was united.
I did not see her the next day, and my heart ached
and my eyes longed for her, as men long for morn-
ing. But the day after, when I returned, about my
usual hour, she was once more on the gallery, and
our looks once more met and embraced. I would
have spoken, I would have drawn near to her ; but
strongly as she plucked at my heart, drawing me
like a magnet, something yet more imperious with-
held me ; and I could only bow and pass by ; and
she, leaving my salutation unanswered, only followed
me with her noble eyes.
I had now her image by rote, and as I conned the
traits in memory it seemed as if I read her very
heart. She was dressed with something of her
mother's coquetry and love of positive colour. Her
robe, which I knew she must have made with her
own hands, clung about her with a cunning grace.
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OLALLA
After the fashion of that country, besides, her bodice
stood open in the middle, in a long slit, and here, in
spite of the poverty of the house, a gold coin, hang-
ing by a ribbon, lay on her brown bosom. These
were proofs, had any been needed, of her inborn
delight in life and her own loveliness. On the other
hand, in her eyes that hung upon mine, I could read
depth beyond depth of passion and sadness, lights of
poetry and hope, blacknesses of despair, and thoughts
that were above the earth. It was a lovely body,
but the inmate, the soul, was more than worthy of
that lodging. Should I leave this incomparable
flower to wither unseen on these rough mountains ?
Should I despise the great gift offered me in the
eloquent silence of her eyes ? Here was a soul
immured ; should I not burst its prison ? All side
considerations fell off from me ; were she the child
of Herod I swore I should make her mine ; and that
very evening I set myself, with a mingled sense of
treachery and disgrace, to captivate the brother.
Perhaps I read him with more favourable eyes,
perhaps the thought of his sister always summoned
up the better qualities of that imperfect soul ; but
he had never seemed to me so amiable, and his very
likeness to Olalla, while it annoyed, yet softened
me.
A third day passed in vain — an empty desert of
hours. I would not lose a chance, and loitered all
afternoon in the court where (to give myself a
countenance) I spoke more than usual with the
Senora. God knows it was with a most tender and
296
OLALLA
sincere interest that I now studied her ; and even
as for Felipe, so now for the mother, I was conscious
of a growing warmth of toleration. And yet I
wondered. Even while I spoke with her, she would
doze off into a little sleep, and presently awake
again without embarrassment ; and this composure
staggered me. And again, as I marked her make
infinitesimal changes in her posture, savouring and
lingering on the bodily pleasure of the movement,
I was driven to wonder at this depth of passive
sensuality. She lived in her body ; and her con-
sciousness was all sunk into and disseminated
through her members, where it luxuriously dwelt.
Lastly, I could not grow accustomed to her eyes.
Each time she turned on me these great beautiful
and meaningless orbs, wide open to the day, but
closed against human inquiry — each time I had
occasion to observe the lively changes of her pupils
which expanded and contracted in a breath — I know
not what it was came over me, I can find no name
for the mingled feeling of disappointment, annoy-
ance, and distaste that jarred along my nerves. I
tried her on a variety of subjects, equally in vain ;
and at last led the talk to her daughter. But even
there she proved indifferent ; said she was pretty,
which (as with children) was her highest word of
commendation, but was plainly incapable of any
higher thought ; and, when I remarked that Olalla
seemed silent, merely yawned in my face and replied
that speech was of no great use when you had
nothing to say. ' People speak much, very much,'
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OLALLA
she added, looking at me with expanded pupils ; and
then again yawned, and again showed me a mouth
that was as dainty as a toy. This time I took the
hint, and, leaving her to her repose, went up into
my own chamber to sit by the open window, looking
on the hills and not beholding them, sunk in lustrous
and deep dreams, and hearkening in fancy to the
note of a voice that I had never heard.
I awoke on the fifth morning with a brightness of
anticipation that seemed to challenge fate. I was
sure of myself, light of heart and foot, and resolved
to put my love incontinently to the touch of know-
ledge. It should lie no longer under the bonds of
silence, a dumb thing, living by the eye only, like
the love of beasts ; but should now put on the spirit,
and enter upon the joys of the complete human
intimacy. I thought of it with wild hopes, like a
voyager to El Dorado ; into that unknown and
lovely country of her soul, I no longer trembled to
adventure. Yet when I did indeed encounter her,
the same force of passion descended on me and at
once submerged my mind ; speech seemed to drop
away from me like a childish habit ; and I but drew
near to her as the giddy man draws near to the
margin of a gulf. She drew back from me a little
as I came ; but her eyes did not waver from mine,
and these lured me forward. At last, when I was
already within reach of her, I stopped. Words were
denied me ; if I advanced I could but clasp her to
my heart in silence ; and all that was sane in me,
all that was still unconquered, revolted against the
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OLALLA
thought of such an accost. So we stood for a second,
all our life in our eyes, exchanging salvos of attrac-
tion and yet each resisting ; and then, with a great
effort of the will, and conscious at the same time of
a sudden bitterness of disappointment, I turned and
went away in the same silence.
What power lay upon me that I could not speak ?
And she, why was she also silent ? Why did she
draw away before me dumbly, with fascinated eyes ?
Was this love? or was it a mere brute attraction,
mindless and inevitable, like that of the magnet for
the steel ? We had never spoken, we were wholly
strangers ; and yet an influence, strong as the grasp
of a giant, swept us silently together. On my side,
it filled me with impatience ; and yet I was sure that
she was worthy ; I had seen her books, read her
verses, and thus, in a sense, divined the soul of my
mistress. But on her side, it struck me almost cold.
Of me, she knew nothing but my bodily favour ; she
was drawn to me as stones fall to the earth ; the
laws that rule the earth conducted her, unconsenting,
to my arms; and I drew back at the thought of
such a bridal, and began to be jealous for myself.
It was not thus that I desired to be loved. And
then I began to fall into a great pity for the girl
herself. I thought how sharp must be her mortifi-
cation, that she, the student, the recluse, Felipe's
saintly monitress, should have thus confessed an
overweening weakness for a man with whom she had
never exchanged a word. And at the coming of
pity, all other thoughts were swallowed up ; and I
299
OLALLA
longed only to find and console and reassure her ; to
tell her how wholly her love was returned on my
side, and how her choice, even if blindly made, was
not unworthy.
The next day it was glorious weather ; depth upon
depth of blue over-canopied the mountains ; the sun
shone wide ; and the wind in the trees and the many
falling torrents in the mountains rilled the air with
delicate and haunting music. Yet I was prostrated
with sadness. My heart wept for the sight of Olalla,
as a child weeps for its mother. I sat down on a
boulder on the verge of the low cliffs that bound the
plateau to the north. Thence I looked down into
the wooded valley of a stream, where no foot came.
In the mood I was in, it was even touching to
behold the place untenanted ; it lacked Olalla ; and
I thought of the delight and glory of a life passed
wholly with her in that strong air, and among these
rugged and lovely surroundings, at first with a
whimpering sentiment, and then again with such a
fiery joy that I seemed to grow in strength and
stature, like a Samson.
And then suddenly I was aware of Olalla drawing
near. She appeared out of a grove of cork-trees,
and came straight towards me ; and I stood up and
waited. She seemed in her walking a creature of
such life and fire and lightness as amazed me ; yet
she came quietly and slowly. Her energy was in
the slowness ; but for inimitable strength, I felt she
would have run, she would have flown to me. Still,
as she approached, she kept her eyes lowered to the
300
OLALLA
ground ; and when she had drawn quite near, it was
without one glance that she addressed me. At the
first note of her voice I started. It was for this I
had been waiting ; this was the last test of my love.
And lo, her enunciation was precise and clear, not
lisping and incomplete like that of her family ; and
the voice, though deeper than usual with women,
was still both youthful and womanly. She spoke in
a rich chord ; golden contralto strains mingled with
hoarseness, as the red threads were mingled with
the brown among her tresses. It was not only a
voice that spoke to my heart directly ; but it spoke
to me of her. And yet her words immediately
plunged me back upon despair.
'You will go away,' she said, 'to-day.'
Her example broke the bonds of my speech ; I
felt as lightened of a weight, or as if a spell had been
dissolved. I know not in what words I answered ;
but, standing before her on the cliffs, I poured out
the whole ardour of my love, telling her that I lived
upon the thought of her, slept only to dream of her
loveliness, and would gladly forswear my country,
my language, and my friends, to live for ever by her
side. And then, strongly commanding myself, I
changed the note ; I reassured, I comforted her ;
I told her I had divined in her a pious and heroic
spirit, with which I was worthy to sympathise, and
which I longed to share and lighten. ' Nature,' I
told her, ' was the voice of God, which men disobey
at peril ; and if we were thus dumbly drawn to-
gether, ay, even as by a miracle of love, it must
301
OLALLA
imply a divine fitness in our souls ; we must be
made,' I said — ' made for one another. We should
be mad rebels,' I cried out — 'mad rebels against
God, not to obey this instinct.'
She shook her head. ' You will go to-day,' she
repeated, and then with a gesture, and in a sudden,
sharp note — ' no, not to-day,' she cried, ' to-morrow ! '
But at this sign of relenting, power came in upon
me in a tide. I stretched out my arms and called
upon her name ; and she leaped to me and clung to
me. The hills rocked about us, the earth quailed ;
a shock as of a blow went through me and left me
blind and dizzy. And the next moment she had
thrust me back, broken rudely from my arms, and
fled with the speed of a deer among the cork-trees.
I stood and shouted to the mountains ; I turned
and went back towards the residencia, walking upon
air. She sent me away, and yet I had but to call
upon her name and she came to me. These were
but the weaknesses of girls, from which even she,
the strangest of her sex, was not exempted. Go?
Not I, Olalla — oh, not I, Olalla, my Olalla ! a bird
sang near by ; and in that season birds were rare.
It bade me be of good cheer. And once more the
whole countenance of nature, from the ponderous
and stable mountains down to the lightest leaf and
the smallest darting fly in the shadow of the groves,
began to stir before me and to put on the lineaments
of life and wear a face of awful joy. The sunshine
struck upon the hills, strong as a hammer on the
anvil, and the hills shook ; the earth, under that
302
OLALLA
vigorous insolation, yielded up heady scents ; the
woods smouldered in the blaze. I felt the thrill of
travail and delight run through the earth. Some-
thing elemental, something rude, violent, and savage,
in the love that sang in my heart, was like a key to
nature's secrets ; and the very stones that rattled
under my feet appeared alive and friendly. Olalla !
Her touch had quickened, and renewed, and strung
me up to the old pitch of concert with the rugged
earth, to a swelling of the soul that men learn to
forget in their polite assemblies. Love burned in
me like rage ; tenderness waxed fierce ; I hated, I
adored, I pitied, I revered her with ecstasy. She
seemed the link that bound me in with dead things
on the one hand, and with our pure and pitying
God upon the other : a thing brutal and divine, and
akin at once to the innocence and to the unbridled
forces of the earth.
My head thus reeling, I came into the courtyard
of the residencia, and the sight of the mother struck
me like a revelation. She sat there, all sloth and
contentment, blinking under the strong sunshine,
branded with a passive enjoyment, a creature set
quite apart, before whom my ardour fell away like
a thing ashamed. I stopped a moment, and, com-
manding such shaken tones as I was able, said a
word or two. She looked at me with her unfathom-
able kindness; her voice in reply sounded vaguely
out of the realm of peace in which she slumbered,
and there fell on my mind, for the first time, a sense
of respect for one so uniformly innocent and happy,
303
OLALLA
and I passed on in a kind of wonder at myself that
I should be so much disquieted.
On my table there lay a piece of the same yellow
paper I had seen in the north room ; it was written
on with pencil in the same hand, Olalla's hand, and
I picked it up with a sudden sinking of alarm, and
read, ' If you have any kindness for Olalla, if you
have any chivalry for a creature sorely wrought, go
from here to-day ; in pity, in honour, for the sake of
Him who died, I supplicate that you shall go.' I
looked at this a while in mere stupidity, then I began
to awaken to a weariness and horror of life ; the
sunshine darkened outside on the bare hills, and I
began to shake like a man in terror. The vacancy
thus suddenly opened in my life unmanned me like
a physical void. It was not my heart, it was not
my happiness, it was life itself that was involved.
I could not lose her. I said so, and stood repeating
it. And then, like one in a dream, I moved to the
window, put forth my hand to open the casement,
and thrust it through the pane. The blood spurted
from my wrist ; and with an instantaneous quietude
and command of myself, I pressed my thumb on the
little leaping fountain, and reflected what to do.
In that empty room there was nothing to my pur-
pose ; I felt, besides, that I required assistance.
There shot into my mind a hope that Olalla herself
might be my helper, and I turned and went down-
stairs, still keeping my thumb upon the wound.
There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe, and
I addressed myself to the recess, whither the Senora
304
OLALLA
had now drawn quite back and sat dozing close
before the fire, for no degree of heat appeared too
much for her.
1 Pardon me,' said I, ' if 1 disturb you, but I must
apply to you for help.'
She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was,
and with the very words I thought she drew in her
breath with a widening of the nostrils and seemed to
come suddenly and fully alive.
' I have cut myself,' I said, ' and rather badly.
See ! ' And I held out my two hands, from which
the blood was oozing and dripping.
Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils shrank into
points ; a veil seemed to fall from her face, and leave
it sharply expressive and yet inscrutable. And as I
still stood, marvelling a little at her disturbance, she
came swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught me
by the hand ; and the next moment my hand was
at her mouth, and she had bitten me to the bone.
The pang of the bite, the sudden spurting of blood,
and the monstrous horror of the act, flashed through
me all in one, and I beat her back ; and she sprang
at me again and again, with bestial cries, cries that
I recognised, such cries as had awakened me on the
night of the high wind. Her strength was like that
of madness ; mine was rapidly ebbing with the loss
of blood ; my mind besides was whirling with the
abhorrent strangeness of the onslaught, and I was
already forced against the wall, when Olalla ran be-
twixt us, and Felipe, following at a bound, pinned
down his mother on the floor.
8— u 305
OLALLA
A trance-like weakness fell upon me ; 1 saw, heard,
and felt, but I was incapable of movement. I heard
the struggle roll to and fro upon the floor, the yells
of that catamount ringing up to Heaven as she
strove to reach me. I felt Olalla clasp me in her
arms, her hair falling on my face, and, with the
strength of a man, raise and half drag, half carry
me upstairs into my own room, where she cast me
down upon the bed. Then I saw her hasten to the
door and lock it, and stand an instant listening to
the savage cries that shook the residencia. And,
then, swift and light as a thought, she was again
beside me, binding up my hand, laying it in her
bosom, moaning and mourning over it, with dove-
like sounds. They were not words that came to her,
they were sounds more beautiful than speech, in-
finitely touching, infinitely tender ; and yet as I
lay there, a thought stung to my heart, a thought
wounded me like a sword, a thought, like a worm in
a flower, profaned the holiness of my love. Yes,
they were beautiful sounds, and they were inspired
by human tenderness ; but was their beauty human ?
All day I lay there. For a long time the cries of
that nameless female thing, as she struggled with her
half-witted whelp, resounded through the house, and
pierced me with despairing sorrow and disgust.
They were the death-cry of my love ; my love was
murdered ; it was not only dead, but an offence to
me ; and yet, think as I pleased, feel as I must, it
still swelled within me like a storm of sweetness,
and my heart melted at her looks and touch. This
306
OLALLA
horror that had sprung out, this doubt upon Olalla,
this savage and bestial strain that ran not only
through the whole behaviour of her family, but found
a place in the very foundations and story of our
love — though it appalled, though it shocked and
sickened me, was yet not of power to break the knot
of my infatuation.
When the cries had ceased, there came a scraping
at the door, by which I knew Felipe was without ;
and Olalla went and spoke to him — I know not
what. With that exception, she stayed close beside
me, now kneeling by my bed and fervently praying,
now sitting with her eyes upon mine. So then, for
these six hours I drank in her beauty, and silently
perused the story in her face. I saw the golden coin
hover on her breaths ; I saw her eyes darken and
brighten, and still speak no language but that of an
unfathomable kindness ; I saw the faultless face, and,
through the robe, the lines of the faultless body.
Night came at last, and in the growing darkness of
the chamber, the sight of her slowly melted ; but
even then the touch of her smooth hand lingered in
mine and talked with me. To lie thus in deadly
weakness and drink in the traits of the beloved, i.
to re-awake to love from whatever shock of dis
illusion. I reasoned with myself; and I shut my
eyes on horrors, and again I was very bold to accept
the worst. What mattered it, if that imperious
sentiment survived ; if her eyes still beckoned and
attached me ; if now, even as before, every fibre of
my dull body yearned and turned to her ? Late
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OLALLA
on in the night some strength revived in me, and I
spoke : —
' Olalla,' I said, ' nothing matters ; I ask nothing ;
I am content : I love you.'
She knelt down a while and prayed, and I devoutly
respected her devotions. The moon had begun to
shine in upon one side of each of the three windows,
and make a misty clearness in the room, by which I
saw her indistinctly. When she re-arose she made
the sign of the cross.
' It is for me to speak,' she said, ' and for you to
listen. I know ; you can but guess. I prayed, how
I prayed for you to leave this place. I begged it of
you, and I know you would have granted me even
this ; or if not, oh let me think so ! '
1 1 love you,' I said.
'And yet you have lived in the world,' she said ;
after a pause, ' you are a man, and wise ; and I am
but a child. Forgive me, if I seem to teach, who
am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain ; but
those who learn much do but skim the face of know-
ledge ; they seize the laws, they conceive the dignity
of the design — the horror of the living fact fades
from their memory. It is we who sit at home with
evil who remember, I think, and are warned and
pity. Go rather, go now, and keep me in mind. So
I shall have a life in the cherished places of your
memory ; a life as much my own as that which I
lead in this body.'
' I love you,' I said once more ; and reaching out
my weak hand, took hers, and carried it to my lips,
308
OLALLA
and kissed it. Nor did she resist, but winced a little ;
and I could see her look upon me with a frown that
was not unkindly, only sad and baffled. And then
it seemed she made a call upon her resolution ;
plucked my hand towards her, herself at the same
time leaning somewhat forward, and laid it on the
beating of her heart. ' There,' she cried, ' you feel
the very footfall of my life. It only moves for you ;
it is yours. But is it even mine ? It is mine in-
deed to offer you, as I might take the coin from my
neck, as I might break a live branch from a tree,
and give it you. And yet not mine ! I dwell, or I
think I dwell (if I exist at all), somewhere apart, an
impotent prisoner, and carried about and deafened
by a mob that I disown. This capsule, such as
throbs against the sides of animals, knows you at a
touch for its master ; ay, it loves you ! But my
soul, does my soul ? I think not ; I know not,
fearing to ask. Yet when you spoke to me, your
words were of the soul ; it is of the soul that you
ask — it is only from the soul that you would take
me.'
' Olalla,' I said, ' the soul and the body are one,
and mostly so in love. What the body chooses, the
soul loves ; where the body clings, the soul cleaves ;
body for body, soul to soul, they come together at
God's signal ; and the lower part (if we can call
aught low) is only the footstool and foundation of
the highest.'
' Have you,' she said, ' seen the portraits in the
house of my fathers ? Have you looked at my
309
OLALLA
mother or at Felipe ? Have your eyes never rested
on that picture that hangs by your bed ? She who
sat for it died ages ago ; and she did evil in her
life. But, look again : there is my hand to the least
line, there are my eyes and my hair. What is mine,
then, and what am I ? If not a curve in this poor
body of mine (which you love, and for the sake of
which you dotingly dream that you love me), not a
gesture that I can frame, not a tone of my voice,
not any look from my eyes, no, not even now when
I speak to him I love, but has belonged to others ?
Others, ages dead, have wooed other men with my
eyes ; other men have heard the pleading of the
same voice that now sounds in your ears. The hands
of the dead are in my bosom ; they move me, they
pluck me, they guide me ; I am a puppet at their
command ; and I but re-inform features and attri-
butes that have long been laid aside from evil in
the quiet of the grave. Is it me you love, friend ?
or the race that made me ? The girl who does not
know and cannot answer for the least portion of
herself ? or the stream of which she is a transitory
eddy, the tree of which she is the passing fruit ?
The race exists ; it is old, it is ever young, it carries
its eternal destiny in its bosom ; upon it, like waves
upon the sea, individual succeeds to individual,
mocked with a semblance of self-control, but they
are nothing. We speak of the soid, but the soul is
in the race.'
' You fret against the common law,' I said. ' You
rebel against the voice of God, which he has made so
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OLALLA
winning to convince, so imperious to command.
Hear it, and how it speaks between us ! Your hand
clings to mine, your heart leaps at my touch, the
unknown elements of which we are compounded
awake and run together at a look ; the clay of the
earth remembers its independent life and yearns to
join us ; we are drawn together as the stars are
turned about in space, or as the tides ebb and flow ;
by tilings older and greater than we ourselves.'
' Alas ! ' she said, ' what can I say to you ? My
fathers, eight hundred years ago, ruled all this pro-
vince : they were wise, great, cunning, and cruel ;
they were a picked race of the Spanish ; their flags
led in war ; the king called them his cousin ; the
people, when the rope was slung for them or when
they returned and found their hovels smoking,
blasphemed their name. Presently a change began.
Man has risen ; if he has sprung from the brutes, he
can descend again to the same level. The breath of
weariness blew on their humanity and the cords re-
laxed ; they began to go down ; their minds fell on
sleep, their passions awoke in gusts, heady and sense-
less like the wind in the gutters of the mountains ;
beauty was still handed down, but no longer the
guiding wit nor the human heart ; the seed passed
on, it was wrapped in flesh, the flesh covered the
bones, but they were the bones and the flesh of
brutes, and their mind was as the mind of flies. I
speak to you as I dare ; but you have seen for your-
self how the wheel has gone backward with my
doomed race. I stand, as it were, upon a little rising
3"
OLALLA
ground in this desperate descent, and see botli before
and behind, both what we have lost and to what
we are condemned to go farther downward. And
shall I — I that dwell apart in the house of the dead,
my body, loathing its ways — shall I repeat the spell?
Shall I bind another spirit, reluctant as my own,
into this bewitched and tempest-broken tenement
that I now suffer in ? Shall I hand down this
cursed vessel of humanity, charge it with fresh life
as with fresh poison, and dash it, like a fire, in the
faces of posterity ? But my vow has been given ;
the race shall cease from off the earth. At this hour
my brother is making ready ; his foot will soon be
on the stair ; and you will go with him and pass out
of my sight for ever. Think of me sometimes as
one to whom the lesson of life was very harshly
told, but who heard it with courage ; as one who
loved you indeed, but who hated herself so deeply
that her love was hateful to her ; as one who sent
you away and yet would have longed to keep you
for ever : who had no dearer hope than to forget
you, and no greater fear than to be forgotten.'
She had drawn towards the door as she spoke, her
rich voice sounding softer and farther away ; and
witli the last word she was gone, and I lay alone in
the moonlit chamber. What I might have done
had not I lain bound by my extreme weakness, I
know not ; but as it was, there fell upon me a great
and blank despair. It was, not long before there
shone in at the door the ruddy glimmer of a lantern,
and Felipe, coming, charged me without a word upon
312
OLALLA
his shoulders, and carried me down to the great gate,
where the cart was waiting. In the moonlight the
hills stood out sharply, as if they were of cardboard ;
on the glimmering surface of the plateau, and from
among the low trees which swung together and
sparkled in the wind, the great black cube of the
residencia stood out bulkily, its mass only broken by
three dimly lighted windows in the northern front
above the gate. They were Olalla's windows, and
as the cart jolted onwards I kept my eyes fixed
upon them, till, where the road dipped into a valley,
they were lost to my view for ever. Felipe walked
in silence beside the shafts, but from time to time
he would check the mule and seem to look back
upon me ; and at length drew quite near and laid
his hand upon my head. There was such kindness
in the touch, and such a simplicity, as of the brutes,
that tears broke from me like the bursting of an
artery.
' Felipe,' I said, ' take me where they will ask no
questions.'
He said never a word, but he turned his mule
about, end for end, retraced some part of the way
we had gone, and, striking into another path, led me
to the mountain village, which was, as we say in
Scotland, the kirk-town of that thinly peopled district.
Some broken memories dwell in my mind of the day
breaking over the plain, of the cart stopping, of arms
that helped me down, of a bare room into which I
was carried, and of a swoon that fell upon me like
sleep.
3i3
OLALLA
The next day and the days following, the old
priest was often at my side with his snuff-box and
prayer-book, and after a while, when I began to pick
up strength, he told me that I was now on a fair
way to recovery, and must as soon as possible hurry
my departure ; whereupon, without naming any
reason, he took snuff and looked at me sideways.
I did not affect ignorance ; I knew he must have
seen Olalla. 'Sir,' said I, 'you know that I do not
ask in wantonness. What of that family ? '
He said they were very unfortunate ; that it
seemed a declining race, and that they Avere very
poor and had been much neglected.
' But she has not,' I said. ' Thanks, doubtless, to
yourself, she is instructed and wise beyond the use
of women. '
' Yes,' he said, ' the Seiiorita is well-informed.
But the family has been neglected.'
' The mother ? ' I queried.
'Yes, the mother too,' said the Padre, taking
snuff. ' But Felipe is a well-intentioned lad.'
' The mother is odd ? ' I asked.
' Very odd,' replied the priest.
' I think, sir, we beat about the bush,' said I.
' You must know more of my affairs than you allow.
You must know my curiosity to be justified on
many grounds. Will you not be frank with me ? '
' My son,' said the old gentleman, ' I will be very
frank with you on matters within my competence ;
on those of which I know nothing it does not
require much discretion to be silent. I will not
314
OLALLA
fence with you, I take your meaning perfectly ; and
what can I say, but that we are all in God's hands,
and that His ways are not our ways ? I have even
advised with my superiors in the Church, but they,
too, were dumb. It is a great mystery.'
* Is she mad ? ' I asked.
' I will answer you according to my belief. She is
not,' returned the Padre, ' or she was not. When
she was young — God help me, I fear I neglected
that wild lamb — she was surely sane ; and yet,
although it did not run to such heights, the same
strain was already notable ; it had been so before
her in her father, ay, and before him, and this
inclined me, perhaps, to think too lightly of it. But
these things go on growing, not only in the indi-
vidual but in the race.'
'When she was young,' I began, and my voice
failed me for a moment, and it was only with a great
effort that I was able to add, ' was she like Olalla ? '
' Now God forbid ! ' exclaimed the Padre. ' God
forbid that any man should think so slightingly of
my favourite penitent. No, no ; the Senorita (but
for her beauty, which I wish most honestly she had
less of) has not a hair's resemblance to what her
mother was at the same age. I could not bear to
have you think so ; though, Heaven knows, it were
perhaps better that you should.'
At this I raised myself in bed, and opened my
heart to the old man ; telling him of our love and of
her decision ; owning my own horrors, my own
passing fancies, but telling him that these were at
3i5
OLALLA
an end ; and, with something more than a purely
formal submission, appealing to his judgment.
He heard me very patiently and without surprise ;
and when I had done, he sat for some time silent.
Then he began : ' The Church,' and instantly broke
off again to apologise. ' I had forgotten, my child,
that you were not a Christian,' said he. ' And
indeed, upon a point so highly unusual, even the
Church can scarce be said to have decided. But
would you have my opinion ? The Senorita is, in a
matter of this kind, the best judge ; I would accept
her judgment.'
On the back of that he went away, nor was he
thenceforward so assiduous in his visits ; indeed,
even when I began to get about again, he plainly
feared and deprecated my society, not as in distaste,
but much as a man might be disposed to flee from
the riddling sphinx. The villagers, too, avoided
me ; they were unwilling to be my guides upon the
mountain. I thought they looked at me askance,
and I made sure that the more superstitious crossed
themselves on my approach. At first I set this
down to my heretical opinions ; but it began at
length to dawn upon me that if I was thus re-
doubted it was because I had stayed at the
residencia. All men despise the savage notions of
such peasantry ; and yet I was conscious of a chill
shadow that seemed to fall and dwell upon my love.
It did not conquer, but I may not deny that it
restrained, my ardour.
Some miles westward of the village there was a
316
OLALLA
gup in the sierra, from which the eye plunged direct
upon the residencia ; and thither it became my daily
habit to repair. A wood crowned the summit; and
just where the pathway issued from its fringes, it
was overhung by a considerable shelf of rock, and
that, in its turn, was surmounted by a crucifix of
the size of life and more than usually painful in
design. This was my perch ; thence, day after day,
I looked down upon the plateau, and the great old
house, and could see Felipe, no bigger than a fly,
going to and fro about the garden. Sometimes
mists would draw across the view, and be broken up
again by mountain winds ; sometimes the plain
slumbered below me in unbroken sunshine ; it
would sometimes be all blotted out by rain. This
distant post, these interrupted sights of the place
where my life had been so strangely changed, suited
the indecision of my humour. I passed whole days
there, debating with myself the various elements of
our position ; now leaning to the suggestions of
love, now giving an ear to prudence, and in the end
halting irresolute between the two.
One day, as I was sitting on my rock, there came
by that way a somewhat gaunt peasant wrapped in
a mantle. He was a stranger, and plainly did not
know me even by repute ; for, instead of keeping
the other side, he drew near and sat down beside me,
and we had soon fallen in talk. Among other things,
he told me he had been a muleteer, and in former
years had much frequented these mountains ; later
on, he had followed the army with his mules, had
317
OLALLA
realised a competence, and was now living retired
with his family.
' Do you know that house ? ' I inquired at last,
pointing to the residencia, for I readily wearied of
any talk that kept me from the thought of Olalla.
He looked at me darkly and crossed himself.
'Too well,' he said ; ' it was there that one of my
comrades sold himself to Satan ; the Virgin shield us
from temptations ! He has paid the price ; he is
now burning in the reddest place in hell ! '
A fear came upon me ; I could answer nothing ;
and presently the man resumed, as if to himself:
' Yes,' he said, ' O yes, I know it. I have passed its
doors. There was snow upon the pass, the wind was
driving it ; sure enough there was death that night
upon the mountains, but there was worse beside the
hearth. I took him by the arm, Senor, and dragged
him to the gate : I conjured him, by all he loved and
respected, to go forth with me ; I went on my knees
before him in the snow ; and I could see he was
moved by my entreaty. And just then she came
out on the gallery, and called him by his name ;
and he turned, and there was she, standing with a
lamp in her hand and smiling on him to come back.
I cried out aloud to God, and threw my arms about
him, but he put me by, and left me alone. He had
made his choice ; God help us. I would pray for
him, but to what end ? there are sins that not even
the Pope can loose.'
' And your friend,' I asked, ' what became of
him ? '
3iS
OLALLA
' Nay, God knows,' said the muleteer. ' If all be
true that we hear, his end was like his sin, a thing
to raise the hair.'
' Do you mean that he was killed ? ' I asked.
' Sure enough, he was killed,' returned the man.
' But how ? Ah, how ? But these are things that it
is sin to speak of.'
' The people of that house . . .' I began.
But he interrupted me with a savage outburst.
* The people ? ' he cried. ' What people ? There
are neither men nor women in that house of Satan's !
What ? have you lived here so long, and never
heard ? ' And here he put his mouth to my ear and
whispered, as if even the fowls of the mountain
might have overheard and been stricken with horror.
What he told me was not true, nor was it even
original ; being, indeed, but a new edition, vamped
up again by village ignorance and superstition, of
stories nearly as ancient as the race of man. It was
rather the application that appalled me. In the old
days, he said, the Church would have burned out
that nest of basilisks ; but the arm of the Church
was now shortened ; his friend Miguel had been un-
punished by the hands of men, and left to the more
awful judgment of an offended God. This was
wrong ; but it should be so no more. The Padre
was sunk in age ; he was even bewitched him-
self ; but the eyes of his flock were now awake to
their own danger ; and some day — ay, and before
long — the smoke of that house should go up to
heaven.
319
OLALLA
He left me filled with horror and fear. Which
way to turn I knew not ; whether first to warn the
Padre, or to carry my ill news direct to the threat-
ened inhabitants of the residencia. Fate was to
decide for me ; for, while I was still hesitating, I
beheld the veiled figure of a woman drawing near
to me up the pathway. No veil could deceive my
penetration ; by every line and every movement I
recognised Olalla ; and keeping hidden behind a
corner of the rock, I suffered her to gain the summit.
Then I came forward. She knew me and paused,
but did not speak ; I, too, remained silent ; and we
continued for some time to gaze upon each other
with a passionate sadness.
' I thought you had gone,' she said at length. ' It
is all that you can do for me — to go. It is all I ever
asked of you. And you still stay. But do you
know, that every day heaps up the peril of death,
not only on your head, but on ours ? A report has
gone about the mountain ; it is thought you love
me, and the people will not suffer it.'
I saw she was already informed of her danger, and
I rejoiced at it. ' Olalla,' I said, ' I am ready to go
this day, this very hour, but not alone.'
She stepped aside and knelt down before the
crucifix to pray, and I stood by and looked now at
her and now at the object of her adoration, now
at the living figure of the penitent, and now at the
ghastly, daubed countenance, the painted wounds,
and the projected ribs of the image. The silence
was only broken by the wailing of some large birds
320
OLALLA
that circled sidelong, as if in surprise or alarm, about
the summit of the hills. Presently Olalla rose again,
turned towards me, raised her veil, and, still leaning
with one hand on the shaft of the crucifix, looked
upon me with a pale and sorrowful countenance.
1 1 have laid my hand upon the cross,' she said.
* The Padre says you are no Christian ; but look up
for a moment with my eyes, and behold the face of
the Man of Sorrows. We are all such as He was —
the inheritors of sin ; we must all bear and expiate a
past which was not ours ; there is in all of us — ay,
even in me — a sparkle of the divine. Like Him, we
must endure for a little while, until morning returns,
bringing peace. Suffer me to pass on upon my way
alone ; it is thus that I shall be least lonely, count-
ing for my friend Him who is the friend of all the
distressed ; it is thus that I shall be the most happy,
having taken my farewell of earthly happiness, and
willingly accepted sorrow for my portion.'
I looked at the face of the crucifix, and, though I
was no friend to images, and despised that imitative
and grimacing art of which it was a rude example,
some sense of what the thing implied was carried
home to my intelligence. The face looked down
upon me with a painful and deadly contraction ; but
the rays of a glory encircled it, and reminded me
that the sacrifice was voluntary. It stood there,
crowning the rock, as it still stands on so many high-
way sides, vainly preaching to passers-by, an emblem
of sad and noble truths ; that pleasure is not an end,
but an accident ; that pain is the choice of the mag-
8— x 321
OLALLA
nanimous ; that it is best to suffer all things and
do well. I turned and went down the mountain
in silence ; and when I looked back for the last time
before the wood closed about my path, I saw Olalla
still leaning on the crucifix.
122
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
CHAPTER I
BY THE DYING MOUNTEBANK
They had sent for the doctor from Bourron before
six. About eight some villagers came round for the
performance, and were told how matters stood. It
seemed a liberty for a mountebank to fall ill like real
people, and they made off again in dudgeon. By
ten Madame Tentaillon was gravely alarmed, and
had sent down the street for Doctor Desprez.
The Doctor was at work over his manuscripts in
one corner of the little dining-room, and his wife
was asleep over the fire in another, when the mes-
senger arrived.
'Sapristi ! ' said the Doctor, ' you should have sent
for me before. It was a case for hurry.' And he
followed the messenger as he was, in his slippers and
skull-cap.
The inn was not thirty yards away, but the mes-
senger did not stop there ; he went in at one door
and out by another into the court, and then led the
way, by a flight of steps beside the stable, to the loft
323
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
where the mountebank lay sick. If Doctor Desprez
were to live a thousand years, he would never forget
his arrival in that room ; for not only was the scene
picturesque, but the moment made a date in his
existence. We reckon our lives, I hardly know
why, from the date of our first sorry appearance in
society, as if from a first humiliation ; for no actor
can come upon the stage with a worse grace. Not
to go further back, which would be judged too
curious, there are subsequently many moving and
decisive accidents in the lives of all, which would
make as logical a period as this of birth. And here,
for instance, Doctor Desprez, a man past forty, who
had made what is called a failure in life, and was
moreover married, found himself at a new point of
departure when he opened the door of the loft above
Tentaillon's stable.
It was a large place, lighted only by a single
candle set upon the floor. The mountebank lay on
his back upon a pallet ; a large man with a Quixotic
nose inflamed with drinking. Madame Tentaillon
stooped over him, applying a hot water and mustard
embrocation to his feet ; and on a chair close by sat
a little fellow of eleven or twelve, with his feet
dangling. These three were the only occupants ex-
cept the shadows. But the shadows were a company
in themselves ; the extent of the room exaggerated
them to a gigantic size, and from the low position of
the candle the light struck upwards and produced
deformed foreshortenings. The mountebank's profile
was enlarged upon the wall in caricature, and it was
324
BY THE DYING MOUNTEBANK
strange to see his nose shorten and lengthen as the
flame was blown about by draughts. As for Madame
Tentaillon, her shadow was no more than a gross
hump of shoulders, with now and again a hemisphere
of head. The chair-legs were spindled out as long-
as stilts, and the boy sat perched atop of them, like
a cloud, in the corner of the roof.
It was the boy who took the Doctor's fancy. He
had a great arched skull, the forehead and the hands
of a musician, and a pair of haunting eyes. It was
not merely that these eyes were large, or steady, or
the softest ruddy brown. There was a look in them,
besides, which thrilled the Doctor, and made him
half uneasy. He was sure he had seen such a look
before, and yet he could not remember how or
where. It was as if this boy, who was quite a
stranger to him, had the eyes of an old friend or an
old enemy. And the boy would give him no peace ;
he seemed profoundly indifferent to what was going
on, or rather abstracted from it in a superior con-
templation, beating gently with his feet against the
bars of the chair, and holding his hands folded on
his lap. But, for all that, his eyes kept following
the Doctor about the room with a thoughtful fixity
of gaze. Desprez could not tell whether he was
fascinating the boy, or the boy was fascinating him.
He busied himself over the sick man, he put ques-
tions, he fell the pulse, he jested, he grew a little hot
and swore : and still, whenever he looked round,
there were the brown eyes waiting for his with the
same inquiring, melancholy gaze.
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
At last the Doctor hit on the solution at a leap.
He remembered the look now. The little fellow,
although he was as straight as a dart, had the eyes
that go usually with a crooked back ; he was not at
all deformed, and yet a deformed person seemed to
be looking at you from below his brows. The
Doctor drew a long breath, he was so much relieved
to find a theory (for he loved theories) and to explain
away his interest.
For all that, he despatched the invalid with
unusual haste, and, still kneeling with one knee on
the floor, turned a little round and looked the boy
over at his leisure. The boy was not in the least
put out, but looked placidly back at the Doctor.
' Is this your father ? ' asked Desprez.
' Oh no,' returned the boy ; ' my master.'
' Are you fond of him ? ' continued the Doctor.
' No, sir,' said the boy.
Madame Tentaillon and Desprez exchanged ex-
pressive glances.
'That is bad, my man,' resumed the latter, with a
shade of sternness. ' Every one should be fond of
the dying, or conceal their sentiments ; and your
master here is dying. If I have watched a bird a
little while stealing my cherries, I have a thought of
disappointment when he flies away over my garden
wall, and I see him steer for the forest and vanish.
How much more a creature such as this, so strong,
so astute, so richly endowed with faculties ! When
I think that, in a few hours, the speech will be
silenced, the breath extinct, and even the shadow
326
BY THE DYING MOUNTEBANK
vanished from the wall, I who never saw him, this
lady who knew him only as a guest, are touched
with some affection.'
The boy was silent for a little, and appeared to be
reflecting.
' You did not know him, 1 he replied at last. ' He
was a bad man.'
' He is a little pagan,' said the landlady. ' For
that matter, they are all the same, these mounte-
banks, tumblers, artists, and what not. They have
no interior.'
But the Doctor was still scrutinising the little
pagan, his eyebrows knotted and uplifted.
' What is your name ? ' he asked.
' Jean-Marie,' said the lad.
Desprez leaped upon him with one of his sudden
flashes of excitement, and felt his head all over from
an ethnological point of view.
' Celtic, Celtic ! ' he said.
' Celtic ! ' cried Madame Tentaillon, who had per-
haps confounded the word with hydrocephalous.
' Poor lad ! is it dangerous ? '
' That depends,' returned the Doctor grimly.
And then once more addressing the boy : ' And
what do you do for your living, Jean-Marie ? ' he
inquired.
' I tumble,' was the answer.
* So ! Tumble ? ' repeated Desprez. ' Probably
healthful. I hazard the guess, Madame Tentaillon,
that tumbling is a healthful way of life. And have
you never done anything else but tumble ? '
327
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
■ Before I learned that I used to steal,' answered
Jean -Marie gravely.
' Upon my word ! ' cried the Doctor. ' You are a
nice little man for your age. — Madame, when my
confrere comes from Bourron, you will communicate
my unfavourable opinion. I leave the case in his
hands ; but of course, on any alarming symptom,
above all if there should be a sign of rally, do not
hesitate to knock me up. I am a doctor no longer,
I thank God ; but I have been one. Good-night,
madame. — Good sleep to you, Jean-Marie.'
CHAPTER II
MORNING TALK
Doctor Desprez always rose early. Before the
smoke arose, before the first cart rattled over the
bridge to the day's labour in the fields, he was to be
found wandering in his garden. Now he would
pick a bunch of grapes ; now he would eat a big
pear under the trellis ; now he would draw all sorts
of fancies on the path with the end of his cane ; now
he would go down and watch the river running end-
lessly past the timber landing-place at which he
moored his boat. There was no time, he used to
say, for making theories like the early morning. ' I
rise earlier than any one else in the village,' he once
boasted. ' It is a fair consequence that I know more
and wish to do less with my knowledge.'
328
MORNING TALK
The Doctor was a connoisseur of sunrises, and
loved a good theatrical effect to usher in the day.
He had a theory of dew, by which he could predict
the weather. Indeed, most things served him to
that end : the sound of the bells from all the neigh-
bouring villages, the smell of the forest, the visits
and the behaviour of both birds and fishes, the look
of the plants in his garden, the disposition of cloud,
the colour of the light, and last, although not least,
the arsenal of meteorological instruments in a louvre-
boarded hutch upon the lawn. Ever since he had
settled at Gretz he had been growing more and more
into the local meteorologist, the unpaid champion
of the local climate. He thought at first there was
no place so healthful in the arrondissement. By the
end of the second year, he protested there was none
so wholesome in the whole department. And for
some time before he met Jean-Marie he had been
prepared to challenge all France and the better part
of Europe for a rival to his chosen spot.
' Doctor,' he would say — ' doctor is a foul word.
It should not be used to ladies. It implies disease.
I remark it, as a flaw in our civilisation, that we have
not the proper horror of disease. Now I, for my
part, have washed my hands of it ; I have renounced
my laureation ; I am no doctor ; I am only a wor-
shipper of the true goddess Hygieia. Ah ! believe
me, it is she who has the cestus ! And here, in this
exiguous hamlet, has she placed her shrine : here she
dwells and lavishes her gifts ; here I walk with her
in the early morning, and she shows me how strong
329
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
she has made the peasants, how fruitful she has
made the fields, how the trees grow up tall and
comely under her eyes, and the fishes in the river
become clean and agile at her presence. — Rheu-
matism ! ' he would cry, on some malapert interrup-
tion, ' Oh yes, I believe we do have a little rheu-
matism. That could hardly be avoided, you know,
on a river. And of course the place stands a little
low ; and the meadows are marshy, there 's no doubt.
But, my dear sir, look at Bourron ! Bourron stands
high. Bourron is close to the forest ; plenty of ozone
there, you would say. Well, compared with Gretz,
Bourron is a perfect shambles.'
The morning after he had been summoned to the
dying mountebank, the Doctor visited the wharf at
the tail of his garden, and had a long look at the
running water. This he called prayer ; but whether
his adorations were addressed to the goddess Hygieia
or some more orthodox deity, never plainly appeared.
For he had uttered doubtful oracles, sometimes
declaring that a river was the type of bodily health,
sometimes extolling it as the great moral preacher,
continually preaching peace, continuity, and diligence
to man's tormented spirits. After he had watched a
mile or so of the clear water running by before his eyes,
seen a fish or two come to the surface with a gleam of
silver, and sufficiently admired the long shadows of
the trees falling half across the river from the opposite
bank, with patches of moving sunlight in between,
he strolled once more up the garden and through his
house into the street, feeling cool and renovated.
330
MORNING TALK
The sound of his feet upon the causeway began
the business of the day ; for the village was still
sound asleep. The church tower looked very airy in
the sunlight ; a few birds that turned about it seemed
to swim in an atmosphere of more than usual rarity ;
and the Doctor, walking in long transparent shadows,
rilled his lungs amply, and proclaimed himself well
contented with the morning.
On one of the posts before Tentaillon's carriage
entry he espied a little dark figure perched in a
meditative attitude, and immediately recognised
Jean-Marie.
' Aha ! ' he said, stopping before him humorously,
with a hand on either knee. ' So we rise early in
the morning, do we ? It appears to me that we have
all the vices of a philosopher.'
The boy got to his feet and made a grave salutation.
' And how is our patient ? ' asked Desprez.
It appeared the patient was about the same.
*■ And why do you rise early in the morning ? ' he
pursued.
Jean-Marie, after a long silence, professed that he
hardly knew.
' You hardly know ? ' repeated Desprez. ' We
hardly know anything, my man, until we try to
learn. Interrogate your consciousness. Come, push
me this inquiry home. Do you like it ? '
' Yes,' said the boy slowly ; ' yes, I like it.'
' And why do you like it ? ' continued the Doctor.
' (We are now pursuing the Socratic method.) Why
do you like it ? '
33*
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
' It is quiet,' answered Jean-Marie ; ' and I have
nothing to do ; and then I feel as if I were good.'
Doctor Desprez took a seat on the post at the
opposite side. He was beginning to take an interest
in the talk, for the boy plainly thought before he
spoke, and tried to answer truly. ' It appears you
have a taste for feeling good,' said the Doctor.
' Now, there you puzzle me extremely ; for I thought
you said you were a thief; and the two are incom-
patible.'
' Is it very bad to steal ? ' asked Jean-Marie.
' Such is the general opinion, little boy,' replied
the Doctor.
'No ; but I mean as I stole,' explained the other.
' For I had no choice. I think it is surely right to
have bread ; it must be right to have bread, there
comes so plain a want of it. And then they beat
me cruelly if I returned with nothing,' he added.
' I was not ignorant of right and wrong ; for before
that I had been well taught by a priest, who was
very kind to me.' (The Doctor made a horrible
grimace at the word 'priest.') 'But it seemed to
me, when one had nothing to eat and was beaten, it
was a different affair. I would not have stolen
for tartlets, I believe ; but any one would steal for
baker's bread.'
' And so I suppose,' said the Doctor, with a rising
sneer, ' you prayed God to forgive you, and ex-
plained the case to him at length.'
' Why, sir ? ' asked Jean -Marie. ' I do not see.'
' Your priest would see, however,' retorted Desprez.
332
MORNING TALK
' Would he ? ' asked the boy, troubled for the
first time. ' I should have thought God would have
known. '
' Eh ? ' snarled the Doctor.
' I should have thought God would have under-
stood me,' replied the other. ' You do not, I see ;
but then it was God that made me think so, was it
not? '
' Little boy, little boy,' said Dr. Desprez, ' I told
you already you had the vices of philosophy ; if you
display the virtues also, I must go. I am a student
of the blessed laws of health, an observer of plain
and temperate nature in her common walks ; and I
cannot preserve my equanimity in presence of a
monster. Do you understand ? '
* No, sir,' said the boy.
' I will make my meaning clear to you,' replied
the Doctor. ' Look there at the sky — behind the
belfry first, where it is so light, and then up and
up, turning your chin back, right to the top of the
dome, where it is already as blue as at noon. Is not
that a beautiful colour? Does it not please the
heart ? We have seen it all our lives, until it has
grown in with our familiar thoughts. Now,' chang-
ing his tone, ' suppose that sky to become suddenly
of a live and fiery amber, like the colour of clear
coals, and growing scarlet towards the top — I do not
say it would be any the less beautiful ; but would
you like it as well ? '
' I suppose not,' answered Jean-Marie.
' Neither do I like you,' returned the Doctor
333
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
roughly. ' I hate all odd people, and you are the
most curious little boy in all the world.'
Jean-Marie seemed to ponder for a while, and
then he raised his head again and looked over at the
Doctor with an air of candid inquiry. ' But are not
you a very curious gentleman ? ' he asked.
The Doctor threw away his stick, bounded on the
boy, clasped him to his bosom, and kissed him on
both cheeks. ' Admirable, admirable imp ! ' he cried.
'What a morning, what an hour for a theorist of
forty-two ! No,' he continued, apostrophising heaven,
' I did not know such boys existed ; I was ignorant
they made them so ; I had doubted of my race ; and
now ! It is like,' he added, picking up his stick,
' like a lovers' meeting. I have bruised my favourite
staff in that moment of enthusiasm. The injury,
however, is not grave.' He caught the boy looking
at him in obvious wonder, embarrassment, and alarm.
' Hullo ! ' said he, ' why do you look at me like that ?
Egad, I believe the boy despises me. Do you de-
spise me, boy ? '
' Oh no,' replied Jean-Marie seriously ; ' only I
do not understand.'
' You must excuse me, sir,' returned the Doctor,
with gravity ; ' I am still so young. Oh, hang him ! '
he added to himself. And he took his seat again and
observed the boy sardonically. ' He has spoiled the
quiet of my morning,' thought he. ' I shall be
nervous all day, and have a febricule when I digest
Let me compose myself.' And so he dismissed his
pre-occupations by an effort of the will which he had
334
MORNING TALK
long practised, and let his soul roam abroad in the
contemplation of the morning. He inhaled the air,
tasting it critically as a connoisseur tastes a vintage,
and prolonging the expiration with hygienic gusto.
He counted the little flecks of cloud along the sky.
He followed the movements of the birds round the
church tower — making long sweeps, hanging poised,
or turning airy somersaults in fancy, and beating the
wind with imaginary pinions. And in this way he
regained peace of mind and animal composure, con-
scious of his limbs, conscious of the sight of his eyes,
conscious that the air had a cool taste, like a fruit,
at the top of his throat ; and at last, in complete
abstraction, he began to sing. The Doctor had but
one air — ' Malbrouck sen va-t-en guerre ' ; even with
that he was on terms of mere politeness ; and his
musical exploits were always reserved for moments
when he was alone and entirely happy.
He was recalled to earth rudely by a pained
expression on the boy's face. ' What do you think
of my singing ? ' he inquired, stopping in the middle
of a note ; and then, after he had waited some little
while and received no answer, ' What do you think
of my singing ? ' he repeated imperiously.
' I do not like it,' faltered Jean-Marie.
' Oh, come ! ' cried the Doctor. ' Possibly you are
a performer yourself ? '
* I sing better than that,' replied the boy.
The Doctor eyed him for some seconds in stupe-
faction. He was aware that he was angry, and
blushed for himself in consequence, which made him
335
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
angrier. ' If this is how you address your master ! '
he said at last, with a shrug and a flourish of his
arms.
' I do not speak to him at all,' returned the boy.
' I do not like him.'
1 Then you like me ? ' snapped Doctor Desprez,
with unusual eagerness.
' I do not know,' answered Jean-Marie.
The Doctor rose. ' I shall wish you a good-
morning,' he said. ' You are too much for me.
Perhaps you have blood in your veins, perhaps
celestial ichor, or perhaps you circulate nothing more
gross than respirable air ; but of one thing I am
inexpugnably assured : — that you are no human
being. No, boy' — shaking his stick at him — 'you
are not a human being. Write, write it in your
memory — "I am not a human being — I have no
pretension to be a human being — I am a dive, a
dream, an angel, an acrostic, an illusion — what you
please, but not a human being." And so accept my
humble salutations and farewell ! '
And with that the Doctor made off along the
street in some emotion, and the boy stood, mentally
gaping, where he left him.
CHAPTER III
THE ADOPTION
Madame Desprez, who answered to the Christian
name of Anastasie, presented an agreeable type of
336
THE ADOPTION
her sex ; exceedingly wholesome to look upon, a
stout brune, with cool smooth cheeks, steady, dark
eyes, and hands that neither art nor nature could
improve. She was the sort of person over whom
adversity passes like a summer cloud ; she might, in
the worst of conjunctions, knit her brows into one
vertical furrow for a moment, but the next it would
be gone. She had much of the placidity of a con-
tented nun ; with little of her piety, however ; for
Anastasie was of a very mundane nature, fond of
oysters and old wine, and somewhat bold pleasantries,
and devoted to her husband for her own sake rather
than for his. She was imperturbably good-natured,
but had no idea of self-sacrifice. To live in that
pleasant old house, with a green garden behind and
bright flowers about the window, to eat and drink of
the best, to gossip with a neighbour for a quarter of
an hour, never to wear stays or a dress except when
she went to Fontainebleau shopping, to be kept in
a continual supply of racy novels, and to be married
to Doctor Desprez and have no ground of jealousy,
filled the cup of her nature to the brim. Those who
had known the Doctor in bachelor days, when he
had aired quite as many theories, but of a different
order, attributed his present philosophy to the study
of Anastasie. It was her brute enjoyment that he
rationalised and perhaps vainly imitated.
Madame Desprez was an artist in the kitchen, and
made coffee to a nicety. She had a knack of tidiness,
with which she had infected the Doctor ; everything
was in its place ; everything capable of polish shone
8— y 337
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
gloriously ; and dust was a thing banished from her
empire. Aline, their single servant, had no other
business in the world but to scour and burnish. So
Doctor Desprez lived in his house like a fatted calf,
warmed and cosseted to his heart's content.
The midday meal was excellent. There was a
ripe melon, a fish from the river in a memorable
Bearnaise sauce, a fat fowl in a fricassee, and a dish
of asparagus, followed by some fruit. The Doctor
drank half a bottle plus one glass, the wife half a
bottle minus the same quantity, which was a marital
privilege, of an excellent Cote-Rotie, seven years
old. Then the coffee was brought, and a flask of
Chartreuse for madame, for the Doctor despised
and distrusted such decoctions ; and then Aline left
the wedded pair to the pleasures of memory and
digestion.
' It is a very fortunate circumstance, my cherished
one,' observed the Doctor — 'this coffee is adorable
— a very fortunate circumstance upon the whole —
Anastasie, I beseech you, go without that poison for
to-day ; only one day, and you will feel the benefit,
I pledge my reputation.'
' What is this fortunate circumstance, my friend ? '
inquired Anastasie, not heeding his protest, which
was of daily recurrence.
' That we have no children, my beautiful,' replied
the Doctor. ' I think of it more and more as the
years go on, and with more and more gratitude
towards the Power that dispenses such afflictions.
Your health, my darling, my studious quiet, our little
338
THE ADOPTION
kitchen delicacies, how they would all have suffered,
how they would all have been sacrificed ! And for
what? Children are the last word of human im-
perfection. Health flees before their face. They
cry, my dear ; they put vexatious questions ; they
demand to be fed, to be washed, to be educated, to
have their noses blown ; and then, when the time
comes, they break our hearts, as I break this piece
of sugar. A pair of professed egoists, like you and
me, should avoid offspring, like an infidelity.'
' Indeed ! ' said she ; and she laughed. ' Now,
that is like you — to take credit for the thing you
could not help.'
'My dear,' returned the Doctor solemnly, 'we
might have adopted.'
' Never ! ' cried madame. ' Never, Doctor, with
my consent. If the child were my own flesh and
blood, I would not say no. But to take another
person's indiscretion on my shoulders, my dear friend,
I have too much sense.'
' Precisely,' replied the Doctor. ' We both had.
And I am all the better pleased with our wisdom,
because — because ' He looked at her sharply.
' Because what ? ' she asked, with a faint pre-
monition of danger.
' Because I have found the right person,' said the
Doctor firmly, 'and shall adopt him this afternoon.'
Anastasie looked at him out of a mist. ' You
have lost your reason,' she said ; and there was a
clang in her voice that seemed to threaten trouble.
' Not so, my dear,' he replied ; ' I retain its com-
339
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
plete exercise. To the proof : instead of attempting
to cloak my inconsistency, I have, by way of pre-
paring you, thrown it into strong relief. You will
there, I think, recognise the philosopher who has the
ecstasy to call you wife. The fact is, I have been
reckoning all this while Avithout an accident. I never
thought to find a son of my own. Now, last night,
I found one. Do not unnecessarily alarm yourself,
my dear ; he is not a drop of blood to me that I
know. It is his mind, darling, his mind that calls
me father.'
' His mind ! ' she repeated, with a titter between
scorn and hysterics. ' His mind, indeed ! Henri, is
this an idiotic pleasantry, or are you mad ? His
mind ! And what of my mind ? '
1 Truly,' replied the Doctor, with a shrug, ' you
have your finger on the hitch. He will be strikingly
antipathetic to my ever beautiful Anastasie. She
will never understand him ; he will never understand
her. You married the animal side of my nature,
dear ; and it is on the spiritual side that I find my
affinity for Jean-Marie. So much so, that, to be
perfectly frank, I stand in some awe of him myself.
You will easily perceive that I am announcing a
calamity for you. Do not,' he broke out in tones
of real solicitude — ' do not give way to tears after a
meal, Anastasie. You will certainly give yourself
a false digestion.'
Anastasie controlled herself. ' You know how
willing I am to humour you,' she said, ' in all
reasonable matters But on this point '
340
THE ADOPTION
'My dear love,' interrupted the Doctor, eager to
prevent a refusal, ' who wished to leave Paris ?
Who made me give up cards, and the opera, and the
boulevard, and my social relations, and all that was
my life before I knew you ? Have I been faithful ?
Have I been obedient ? Have I not borne my doom
with cheerfulness ? In all honesty, Anastasie, have
I not a right to a stipulation on my side ? I have,
and you know it. I stipulate my son.'
Anastasie was aware of defeat; she struck her
colours instantly. ' You will break my heart,' she
sighed.
' Not in the least,' said he. 'You will feel a trifling
inconvenience for a month, just as I did when I was
first brought to this vile hamlet ; then your admir-
able sense and temper will prevail, and I see you
already as content as ever, and making your husband
the happiest of men.'
'You know I can refuse you nothing,' she said,
with a last flicker of resistance ; ' nothing that will
make you truly happier. But will this ? Are you
sure, my husband ? Last night, you say, you found
him ! He may be the worst of humbugs.'
' I think not,' replied the Doctor. ' But do not
suppose me so unwary as to adopt him out of hand.
I am, I flatter myself, a finished man of the world ;
I have had all possibilities in view ; my plan is con-
trived to meet them all. I take the lad as stable-
boy. If he pilfer, if he grumble, if he desire to
change, I shall see I was mistaken ; I shall recognise
him for no son of mine, and send him tramping.'
34i
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
' You will never do so when the time comes,' said
his wife ; ' I know your good heart.'
She reached out her hand to him, with a sigh ; the
Doctor smiled as he took it and carried it to his lips;
he had gained his point with greater ease than he
had dared to hope ; for perhaps the twentieth time
he had proved the efficacy of his trusty argument,
his Excalibur, the hint of a return to Paris. Six
months in the capital, for a man of the Doctor's
antecedents and relations, implied no less a calamity
than total ruin. Anastasie had saved the remainder
of his fortune by keeping him strictly in the country.
The very name of Paris put her in a blue fear ;
and she would have allowed her husband to keep a
menagerie in the back-garden, let alone adopting a
stable-boy, rather than permit the question of return
to be discussed.
About four of the afternoon, the mountebank
rendered up his ghost ; he had never been conscious
since his seizure. Doctor Desprez was present at
his last passage, and declared the farce over. Then
he took Jean-Marie by the shoulder and led him out
into the inn garden, where there was a convenient
bench beside the river. Here he sat him down and
made the boy place himself on his left.
'Jean-Marie,' he said very gravely, 'this world is
exceedingly vast ; and even France, which is only a
small corner of it, is a great place for a little lad like
you. Unfortunately it is full of eager, shouldering
people moving on ; and there are very few bakers'
shops for so many eaters. Your master is dead ; you
342
THE ADOPTION
are not fit to gain a living by yourself; you do not
wish to steal ? No. Your situation then is undesir-
able ; it is, for the moment, critical. On the other
hand, you behold in me a man not old, though
elderly, still enjoying the youth of the heart and the
intelligence ; a man of instruction ; easily situated in
this world's affairs ; keeping a good table : — a man,
neither as friend nor host, to be despised. I offer
you your food and clothes, and to teach you lessons
in the evening, which will be infinitely more to the
purpose for a lad of your stamp than those of all the
priests in Europe. I propose no wages, but if ever
you take a thought to leave me, the door shall be
open, and I will give you a hundred francs to start
the world upon. In return, I have an old horse and
chaise, which you would very speedily learn to clean
and keep in order. Do not hurry yourself to answer,
and take it or leave it as you judge aright. Only
remember this, that I am no sentimentalist or charit-
able person, but a man who lives rigorously to him-
self; and that if I make the proposal, it is for my
own ends — it is because I perceive clearly an advan-
tage to myself. And now, reflect.'
' I shall be very glad. I do not see what else I
can do. I thank you, sir, most kindly, and I will
try to be useful,' said the boy.
' Thank you,' said the Doctor warmly, rising at
the same time and wiping his brow, for he had
suffered agonies while the thing hung in the wind.
A refusal, after the scene at noon, would have placed
him in a ridiculous light before Anastasie. ' How
343
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
hot and heavy is the evening, to be sure ! I have
always had a fancy to be a fish in summer, Jean-
Marie, here in the Loing beside Gretz. I should lie
under a water-lily and listen to the bells, which must
sound most delicately down below. That would be
a life — do you not think so too ? '
' Yes,' said Jean-Marie.
' Thank God you have imagination ! ' cried the
Doctor, embracing the boy with his usual effusive
warmth, though it was a proceeding that seemed to
disconcert the sufferer almost as much as if he had
been an English schoolboy of the same age. ' And
now,' he added, ' I will take you to my wife.'
Madame Desprez sat in the dining-room in a cool
wrapper. All the blinds were down, and the tile
floor had been recently sprinkled with water; her
eyes were half shut, but she affected to be reading a
novel as they entered. Though she was a bustling
woman, she enjoyed repose between-whiles and had
a remarkable appetite for sleep.
The Doctor went through a solemn form of intro-
duction, adding, for the benefit of both parties, ' You
must try to like each other for my sake.'
'He is very pretty,' said Anastasie. — 'Will you
kiss me, my pretty little fellow ? '
The Doctor was furious, and dragged her into the
passage. ' Are you a fool, Anastasie ? ' he said.
' What is all this I hear about the tact of women ?
Heaven knows, I have not met with it in my ex-
perience. You address my little philosopher as if he
were an infant. He must be spoken to with more
344
THE ADOPTION
respect, I tell you ; lie must not be kissed and
Georgy-porgy'd like an ordinary child.'
' 1 only did it to please you, I am sure,' replied
Anastasie ; ' but I will try to do better. '
The Doctor apologised for his warmth. ' But I
do wish him,' he continued, • to feel at home among
us. And really your conduct was so idiotic, my
cherished one, and so utterly and distantly out of
place, that a saint might have been pardoned a little
vehemence in disapproval. Do, do try— if it is pos-
sible for a woman to understand young people — but of
course it is not, and I waste my breath. Hold your
tongue as much as possible at least, and observe my
conduct narrowly ; it will serve you for a model.'
Anastasie did as she was bidden, and considered
the Doctor's behaviour. She observed that he em-
braced the boy three times in the course of the
evening, and managed generally to confound and
abash the little fellow out of speech and appetite.
But she had the true womanly heroism in little
affairs. Not only did she refrain from the cheap
revenge of exposing the Doctor's errors to himself,
but she did her best to remove their ill effect on
Jean-Marie. When Desprez went out for his last
breath of air before retiring for the night, she came
over to the boy's side and took his hand.
'You must not be surprised nor frightened by my
husband's manners,' she said. ' He is the kindest of
men, but so clever that he is sometimes difficult to
understand. You will soon grow used to him, and
then you will love him, for that nobody can help.
345
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
As for me, you may be sure, I shall try to make you
happy, and will not bother you at all. I think we
should be excellent friends, you and I. I am not
clever, but I am very good-natured. Will you give
me a kiss ? '
He held up his face, and she took him in her arms
and then began to cry. The woman had spoken in
complaisance ; but she had warmed to her own words,
and tenderness followed. The Doctor, entering,
found them enlaced : he concluded that his wife was
in fault; and he was just beginning, in an aAvful
voice, ' Anastasie ,' when she looked up at him,
smiling, with an upraised finger; and he held his
peace, wondering, while she led the boy to his attic.
CHAPTER IV
THE EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER
The installation of the adopted stable-boy was thus
happily effected, and the wheels of life continued to
run smoothly in the Doctor's house. Jean-Marie
did his horse and carriage duty in the morning ;
sometimes helped in the house-work ; sometimes
walked abroad with the Doctor, to drink wisdom
from the fountain-head ; and was introduced at night
to the sciences and the dead tongues. He retained
his singular placidity of mind and manner ; he was
rarely in fault ; but he made only a very partial
progress in his studies, and remained much of a
stranger in the family.
346
EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER
The Doctor was a pattern of regularity. All
forenoon he worked on his great book, the Com-
parative Pharmacopoeia, or Historical Dictionary of
all Medicines, which as yet consisted principally of
slips of paper and pins. When finished, it was to
fill many personable volumes, and to combine anti-
quarian interest with professional utility. But the
Doctor was studious of literary graces and the pic-
turesque ; an anecdote, a touch of manners, a moral
qualification, or a sounding epithet was sure to be
preferred before a piece of science ; a little more,
and he would have written the Comparative Phar-
macopoeia in verse ! The article ' Mummia,' for
instance, was already complete, though the remainder
of the work had not progressed beyond the letter A.
It was exceedingly copious and entertaining, written
with quaintness and colour, exact, erudite, a literary
article ; but it would hardly have afforded guidance
to a practising physician of to-day. The feminine
good sense of his wife had led her to point this out
with uncompromising sincerity ; for the Dictionary
was duly read aloud to her, betwixt sleep and
waking, as it proceeded towards an infinitely distant
completion ; and the Doctor was a little sore on the
subject of mummies, and sometimes resented an
allusion with asperity.
After the midday meal and a proper period of
digestion, he walked, sometimes alone, sometimes
accompanied by Jean-Marie ; for madame would
have preferred any hardship rather than walk.
She was, as I have said, a very busy person, con-
347
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
tinually occupied about material comforts, and ready
to drop asleep over a novel the instant she was dis-
engaged. This was the less objectionable, as she
never snored or grew distempered in complexion
when she slept. On the contrary, she looked the
very picture of luxurious and appetising ease, and
woke without a start to the perfect possession of her
faculties. I am afraid she was greatly an animal,
but she was a very nice animal to have about. In
this way, she had little to do with Jean-Marie ; but
the sympathy which had been established between
them on the first night remained unbroken ; they
held occasional conversations, mostly on household
matters ; to the extreme disappointment of the
Doctor, they occasionally sallied off together to that
temple of debasing superstition, the village church ;
madame and he, both in their Sunday's best, drove
twice a month to Fontainebleau and returned laden
with purchases ; and in short, although the Doctor
still continued to regard them as irreconcilably anti-
pathetic, their relation was as intimate, friendly, and
confidential as their natures suffered.
I fear, however, that in her heart of hearts
madame kindly despised and pitied the boy. She
had no admiration for his class of virtues ; she liked
a smart, polite, forward, roguish sort of boy, cap in
hand, light of foot, meeting the eye ; she liked volu-
bility, charm, a little vice — the promise of a second
Doctor Desprez. And it was her indefeasible belief
that Jean-Marie was dull. ' Poor dear boy,' she had
said once, iiow sad it is that he should be so stupid!'
348
EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER
She had never repeated that remark, for the Doctor
had raged like a wild bull, denouncing the brutal
bluntness of her mind, bemoaning his own fate to be
so unequally mated with an ass, and, what touched
Anastasie more nearly, menacing the table china by
the fury of his gesticulations. But she adhered
silently to her opinion ; and when Jean-Marie was
sitting, stolid, blank, but not unhappy, over his
unfinished tasks, she would snatch her opportunity
in the Doctor's absence, go over to him, put her
arms about his neck, lay her cheek to his, and com-
municate her sympathy with his distress. ' Do not
mind,' she would say ; ' I, too, am not at all clever,
and I can assure you that it makes no difference in
life.'
The Doctor's view was naturally different. That
gentleman never wearied of the sound of his own
voice, which was, to say the truth, agreeable enough
to hear. He now had a listener, who was not so
cynically indifferent as Anastasie, and who some-
times put him on his mettle by the most relevant
objections. Besides, was he not educating the boy ?
And education, philosophers are agreed, is the most
philosophical of duties. What can be more heavenly
to poor mankind than to have one's hobby grow into
a duty to the State ? Then, indeed, do the ways of
life become ways of pleasantness. Never had the
Doctor seen reason to be more content with his
endowments. Philosophy flowed smoothly from his
lips. He was so agile a dialectician that he could
trace his nonsense, when challenged, back to some
349
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
root in sense, and prove it to be a sort of flower upon
his system. He slipped out of antinomies like a
fish, and left his disciple marvelling at the rabbi's
depth.
Moreover, deep down in his heart the Doctor was
disappointed with the ill-success of his more formal
education. A boy, chosen by so acute an observer
for his aptitude, and guided along the path of learn-
ing by so philosophic an instructor, was bound, by
the nature of the universe, to make a more obvious
and lasting advance. Now Jean-Marie was slow in
all things, impenetrable in others ; and his power of
forgetting was fully on a level with his power to
learn. Therefore the Doctor cherished his peri-
patetic lectures, to which the boy attended, which
he generally appeared to enjoy, and by which he
often profited.
Many and many were the talks they had together ;
and health and moderation proved the subject of
the Doctor's divagations. To these he lovingly
returned.
' I lead you,' he would say, ' by the green pastures.
My system, my beliefs, my medicines, are resumed
in one phrase — to avoid excess. Blessed nature,
healthy, temperate nature, abhors and exterminates
excess. Human law, in this matter, imitates at a
great distance her provisions ; and we must strive to
supplement the efforts of the law. Yes, boy, we
must be a law to ourselves and for our neighbours —
lex armata — armed, emphatic, tyrannous law. If
you see a crapulous human ruin snuffing, dash from
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EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER
him his box ! The judge, though in a way an
admission of disease, is less offensive to me than
either the doctor or the priest. Above all the
doctor — the doctor and the purulent trash and
garbage of his pharmacopoeia ! Pure air — from the
neighbourhood of a pinetum for the sake of the
turpentine — unadulterated wine, and the reflections
of an unsophisticated spirit in the presence of the
works of nature — these, my boy, are the best medical
appliances and the best religious comforts. Devote
yourself to these. Hark ! there are the bells of
Bourron (the wind is in the north, it will be fair).
How clear and airy is the sound ! The nerves are
harmonised and quieted; the mind attuned to silence;
and observe how easily and regularly beats the heart!
Your unenlightened doctor would see nothing in
these sensations ; and yet you yourself perceive they
are a part of health. Did you remember your cin-
chona this morning ? Good. Cinchona also is a
work of nature ; it is, after all, only the bark of a
tree which we might gather for ourselves if we lived
in the locality. What a world is this ! Though a
professed atheist, I delight to bear my testimony to
the world. Look at the gratuitous remedies and
pleasures that surround our path ! The river runs
by the garden end, our bath, our fishpond, our
natural system of drainage. There is a well in the
court which sends up sparkling water from the
earth's very heart, clean, cool, and, with a little
wine, most wholesome. The district is notorious
for its salubrity ; rheumatism is the only prevalent
351
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
complaint, and I myself have never had a touch of
it. I tell you — and my opinion is based upon the
coldest, clearest processes of reason — if I, if you,
desired to leave this home of pleasures, it would be
the duty, it would be the privilege, of our best friend
to prevent us with a pistol bullet'
One beautiful June day they sat upon the hill out-
side the village. The river, as blue as heaven, shone
here and there among the foliage. The indefatigable
birds turned and flickered about Gretz church-tower.
A healthy wind blew from over the forest, and the
sound of innumerable thousands of tree-tops and
innumerable millions on millions of green leaves was
abroad in the air, and filled the ear with something
between whispered speech and singing. It seemed
as if every blade of grass must hide a cigale ; and the
fields rang merrily with their music, jingling far and
near as with the sleigh-bells of the fairy queen.
From their station on the slope the eye embraced
a large space of poplared plain upon the one hand,
the waving hill-tops of the forest on the other, and
Gretz itself in the middle, a handful of roofs. Under
the bestriding arch of the blue heavens, the place
seemed dwindled to a toy. It seemed incredible
that people dwelt, and could find room to turn or
air to breathe, in such a corner of the world. The
thought came home to the boy, perhaps for the first
time, and he gave it words.
' How small it looks ! ' he sighed.
'Ay,' replied the Doctor, 'small enough now.
Yet it was once a walled city ; thriving, full of
35 2
EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER
furred burgesses and men in armour, humming with
affairs ; — with tall spires, for aught that I know, and
portly towers along the battlements. A thousand
chimneys ceased smoking at the curfew bell. There
were gibbets at the gate as thick as scarecrows. In
time of war, the assault swarmed against it with lad-
ders, the arrows fell like leaves, the defenders sallied
hotly over the drawbridge, each side uttered its cry
as they plied their weapons. Do you know that the
walls extended as far as the Commanderie ? Tradi-
tion so reports. Alas ! what a long way off is all
this confusion — nothing left of it but my quiet
words spoken in your ear — and the town itself
shrunk to the hamlet underneath us ! By and by
came the English wars — you shall hear more of the
English, a stupid people, who sometimes blundered
into good — and Gretz was taken, sacked, and burned.
It is the history of many towns ; but Gretz never
rose again ; it was never rebuilt ; its ruins were a
quarry to serve the growth of rivals ; and the stones
of Gretz are now erect along the streets of Nemours.
It gratifies me that our old house was the first to
rise after the calamity ; when the town had come to
an end, it inaugurated the hamlet.'
' I, too, am glad of that,' said Jean-Marie.
' It should be the temple of the humbler virtues,'
responded the Doctor with a savoury gusto. ' Perhaps
one of the reasons why I love my little hamlet as
I do, is that we have a similar history, she and I.
Have I told you that I was once rich ? '
' I do not think so,' answered Jean-Marie. ' I do
8— z 353
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
not think I should have forgotten. I am sorry you
should have lost your fortune.'
' Sorry ? ' cried the Doctor. ' Why, I find I have
scarce begun your education after all. Listen to
me ! AVould you rather live in the old Gretz or in
the new, free from the alarms of war, with the green
country at the door, without noise, passports, the
exactions of the soldiery, or the jangle of the curfew-
bell to send us off to bed by sundown ? '
' I suppose I should prefer the new,' replied the
boy.
' Precisely,' returned the Doctor ; ' so do I. And,
in the same way, I prefer my present moderate
fortune to my former wealth. Golden mediocrity !
cried the adorable ancients ; and I subscribe to their
enthusiasm. Have I not good wine, good food,
good air, the fields and the forest for my walk, a
house, an admirable wife, a boy whom I protest I
cherish like a son? Now, if I were still rich, I
should indubitably make my residence in Paris —
you know Paris — Paris and Paradise are not con-
vertible terms. This pleasant noise of the wind
streaming among leaves changed into the grinding
Babel of the street, the stupid glare of plaster
substituted for this quiet pattern of greens and
greys, the nerves shattered, the digestion falsified —
picture the fall ! Already you perceive the con-
sequences : the mind is stimulated, the heart steps
to a different measure, and the man is himself no
longer. I have passionately studied myself — the
true business of philosophy. I know my character
354
EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER
as the musician knows the ventages of his flute.
Should I return to Paris, I should ruin myself
gambling; nay, I go further — I should break the
heart of my Anastasie with infidelities.'
This was too much for Jean-Marie. That a place
should so transform the most excellent of men tran-
scended his belief. Paris, he protested, was even
an agreeable place of residence. ' Nor when 1 lived
in that city did I feel much difference,' he pleaded.
' What ! ' cried the Doctor. ' Did you not steal
when you were there ? '
But the boy could never be brought to see that
he had done anything wrong when he stole. Nor,
indeed, did the Doctor think he had ; but that
gentleman was never very scrupulous when in want
of a retort.
' And now,' he concluded, ' do you begin to under-
stand ? My only friends were those who ruined me.
Gretz has been my academy, my sanatorium, my
heaven of innocent pleasures. If millions are offered
me, I wave them back : Retro Sathanas ! — Evil one,
begone ! Fix your mind on my example ; despise
riches, avoid the debasing influence of cities. Hy-
giene — hygiene and mediocrity of fortune — these be
your watchwords during life ! '
The Doctor's system of hygiene strikingly coin-
cided with his tastes ; and his picture of the perfect
life was a faithful description of the one he was lead-
ing at the time. But it is easy to convince a boy,
whom you supply with all the facts for the discus-
sion. And besides, there was one thing admirable
355
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
in the philosophy, and that was the enthusiasm of
the philosopher. There was never any one more
vigorously determined to be pleased ; and if he was
not a great logician, and so had no right to convince
the intellect, he was certainly something of a poet,
and had a fascination to seduce the heart. Wliat
he could not achieve in his customary humour of a
radiant admiration of himself and his circumstances,
he sometimes effected in his fits of gloom.
' Boy,' he would say, ' avoid me to-day. If I were
superstitious, I should even beg for an interest in
your prayers. I am in the black fit ; the evil spirit
of King Saul, the hag of the merchant Abudah, the
personal devil of the mediaeval monk, is with me — is
in me,' tapping on his breast. 'The vices of my
nature are now uppermost ; innocent pleasures woo
me in vain ; I long for Paris, for my wallowing in
the mire. See,' he would continue, producing a
handful of silver, * I denude myself, I am not to be
trusted with the price of a fare. Take it, keep it
for me, squander it on deleterious candy, throw it in
the deepest of the river — I will homologate your
action. Save me from that part of myself which I
disown. If you see me falter, do not hesitate ; if
necessary, wreck the train ! I speak, of course, by
a parable. Any extremity were better than for me
to reach Paris alive.'
Doubtless the Doctor enjoyed these little scenes,
as a variation in his part; they represented the
Byronic element in the somewhat artificial poetry of
his existence ; but to the boy, though he was dimly
356
EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER
aware of their theatricality, they represented more.
The Doctor made perhaps too little, the boy pos-
sibly too much, of the reality and gravity of these
temptations.
One day a great light shone for Jean-Marie.
• Could not riches be used well ? ' he asked.
' In theory, yes,' replied the Doctor. ' But it is
found in experience that no one does so. All the
world imagine they will be exceptional when they
grow wealthy ; but possession is debasing, new
desires spring up ; and the silly taste for ostentation
eats out the heart of pleasure.'
' Then you might be better if you had less,' said
the boy.
' Certainly not,' replied the Doctor ; but his voice
quavered as he spoke.
' Why ? ' demanded pitiless innocence.
Doctor Desprez saw all the colours of the rainbow
in a moment ; the stable universe appeared to be
about capsizing with him. ' Because,' said he —
affecting deliberation after an obvious pause — 'be-
cause I have formed my life for my present income.
It is not good for men of my years to be violently
dissevered from their habits.'
That was a sharp brush. The Doctor breathed
hard, and fell into taciturnity for the afternoon. As
for the boy, he was delighted with the resolution of
his doubts ; even wondered that he had not foreseen
the obvious and conclusive answer. His faith in the
Doctor was a stout piece of goods. Desprez was
inclined to be a sheet in the wind's eye after dinner,
357
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
especially after Rhone wine, his favourite weakness.
He would then remark on the warmth of his feeling
for Anastasie, and with inflamed cheeks and a loose,
flustered smile, debate upon all sorts of topics, and
be feebly and indiscreetly witty. But the adopted
stable-boy would not permit himself to entertain a
doubt that savoured of ingratitude. It is quite true
that a man may be a second father to you, and yet
take too much to drink ; but the best natures are
ever slow to accept such truths.
The Doctor thoroughly possessed his heart, but
perhaps he exaggerated his influence over his mind.
Certainly Jean-Marie adopted some of his master's
opinions, but I have yet to learn that he ever sur-
rendered one of his own. Convictions existed in
him by divine right ; they were virgin, unwrought,
the brute metal of decision. He could add others
indeed, but he could not put away ; neither did he
care if they were perfectly agreed among themselves ;
and his spiritual pleasures had nothing to do with
turning them over or justifying them in words.
Words were with him a mere accomplishment, like
dancing. When he was by himself, his pleasures
were almost vegetable. He would slip into the
woods towards Acheres, and sit in the mouth of a
cave among grey birches. His soul stared straight
out of his eyes ; he did not move or think ; sunlight,
thin shadows moving in the wind, the edge of firs
against the sky, occupied and bound his faculties.
He was pure unity, a spirit wholly abstracted. A
single mood filled him, to which all the objects of
358
EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER
sense contributed, as the colours of the spectrum
merge and disappear in white light
So while the Doctor made himself drunk with
words, the adopted stable-boy bemused himself with
silence.
CHAPTER V
TREASURE TROVE
The Doctor's carriage was a two-wheeled gig with
a hood ; a kind of vehicle in much favour among
country doctors. On how many roads has one not
seen it, a great way off between the poplars ! — in
how many village streets, tied to a gate-post ! This
sort of chariot is affected — particularly at the trot —
by a kind of pitching movement to and fro across
the axle, which well entitles it to the style of a
Noddy. The hood describes a considerable arc
against the landscape, with a solemnly absurd effect
on the contemplative pedestrian. To ride in such a
carriage cannot be numbered among the things that
appertain to glory ; but I have no doubt it may be
useful in liver-complaint. Thence, perhaps, its wide
popularity among physicians.
One morning early, Jean-Marie led forth the
Doctor's noddy, opened the gate, and mounted to
the driving-seat. The Doctor followed, arrayed
from top to toe in spotless linen, armed with an
immense flesh-coloured umbrella, and girt with a
359
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
botanical case on a baldric ; and the equipage drove
off smartly in a breeze of its own provocation.
They were bound for Franchard, to collect plants,
with an eye to the Comparative Pharmacopoeia.
A little rattling on the open roads, and they came
to the borders of the forest and struck into an un-
frequented track ; the noddy yawed softly over the
sand, with an accompaniment of snapping twigs.
There was a great, green, softly murmuring cloud of
congregated foliage overhead. In the arcades of the
forest the air retained the freshness of the night.
The athletic bearing of the trees, each carrying its
leafy mountain, pleased the mind like so many
statues ; and the lines of the trunk led the eye
admiringly upward to where the extreme leaves
sparkled in a patch of azure. Squirrels leaped in
mid-air. It was a proper spot for a devotee of the
goddess Hygieia.
' Have you been to Franchard, Jean-Marie ? '
inquired the Doctor. ' I fancy not'
' Never,' replied the boy.
' It is a ruin in a gorge,' continued Desprez, adopt-
ing his expository voice ; ' the ruin of a hermitage
and chapel. History tells us much of Franchard ;
how the recluse was often slain by robbers ; how he
lived on a most insufficient diet ; how he was ex-
pected to pass his days in prayer. A letter is pre-
served addressed to one of these solitaries by the
superior of his order, full of admirable hygienic
advice ; bidding him go from his book to praying,
and so back again, for variety's sake, and when he
360
TREASURE TROVE
was weary of both to stroll about his garden and
observe the honey-bees. It is to this day my own
system. You must often have remarked me leaving
the Pharmacopoeia — often even in the middle of a
phrase — to come forth into the sun and air. I
admire the writer of that letter from my heart ; he
was a man of thought on the most important sub-
jects. But, indeed, had I lived in the Middle Ages
(I am heartily glad that I did not) I should have
been an eremite myself — if I had not been a pro-
fessed buffoon, that is. These were the only philo-
sophical lives yet open : laughter or prayer ; sneers,
we might say, and tears. Until the sun of the
Positive arose, the wise man had to make his choice
between these two.'
' I have been a buffoon, of course,' observed Jean-
Marie.
' I cannot imagine you to have excelled in your
profession,' said the Doctor, admiring the boy's
gravity. ' Do you ever laugh ? '
' Oh yes,' replied the other. ' I laugh often. I
am very fond of jokes.'
' Singular being ! ' said Desprez. ' But I divagate
(I perceive in a thousand ways that I grow old).
Franchard was at length destroyed in the English
wars, the same that levelled Gretz. But — here is
the point — the hermits (for there were already more
than one) had foreseen the danger and carefully con-
cealed the sacrificial vessels. These vessels were of
monstrous value, Jean-Marie — monstrous value —
priceless, we may say ; exquisitely worked, of exqui-
361
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
site material. And now, mark me, they have never
been found. In the reign of Louis Quatorze some
fellows were digging hard by the ruins. Suddenly —
tock ! — the spade hit upon an obstacle. Imagine
the men looking one to another ; imagine how their
hearts bounded, how their colour came and went.
It was a coffer, and in Franchard, the place of buried
treasure ! They tore it open like famished beasts.
Alas ! it was not the treasure ; only some priestly
robes, which, at the touch of the eating air, fell upon
themselves and instantly wasted into dust. The
perspiration of these good fellows turned cold upon
them, Jean-Marie. I will pledge my reputation, if
there was anything like a cutting wind, one or other
had a pneumonia for his trouble.'
' I should like to have seen them turning into
dust,' said Jean-Marie. ' Otherwise, I should not
have cared so greatly.'
' You have no imagination,' cried the Doctor.
' Picture to yourself the scene. Dwell on the idea —
a great treasure lying in the earth for centuries : the
material for a giddy, copious, opulent existence not
employed ; dresses and exquisite pictures unseen ;
the swiftest galloping horses not stirring a hoof,
arrested by a spell ; women with the beautiful
faculty of smiles, not smiling; cards, dice, opera
singing, orchestras, castles, beautiful parks and gar-
dens, big ships with a tower of sailcloth, all lying
unborn in a coffin — and the stupid trees growing
overhead in the sunlight, year after year. The
thought drives one frantic'
362
TREASURE TROVE
' It is only money,' replied Jean-Marie. ' It would
do harm.'
' Oh, come ! ' cried Desprez, ' that is philosophy ; it
is all very fine, but not to the point just now. And
besides, it is not " only money," as you call it ; there
are works of art in the question ; the vessels were
carved. You speak like a child. You weary me
exceedingly, quoting my words out of all logical
connection, like a parroquet'
' And at any rate, we have nothing to do with it,'
returned the boy submissively.
They struck the Route Ronde at that moment ;
and the sudden change to the rattling causeway
combined, with the Doctor's irritation, to keep him
silent. The noddy jigged along ; the trees went by,
looking on silently, as if they had something on their
minds. The Quadrilateral was passed; then came
Franchard. They put up the horse at the little
solitary inn, and went forth strolling. The gorge
was dyed deeply with heather ; the rocks and birches
standing luminous in the sun. A great humming of
bees about the flowers disposed Jean-Marie to sleep,
and he sat down against a clump of heather, while
the Doctor went briskly to and fro, with quick turns,
culling his simples.
The boy's head had fallen a little forward, his eyes
were closed, his fingers had fallen lax about his knees,
when a sudden cry called him to his feet. It was a
strange sound, thin and brief; it fell dead, and silence
returned as though it had never been interrupted.
He had not recognised the Doctor's voice ; but, as
363
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
there was no one else in all the valley, it was plainly
the Doctor who had given utterance to the sound.
He looked right and left, and there was Desprez,
standing in a niche between two boulders, and look-
ing round on his adopted son with a countenance as
white as paper.
' A viper ! ' cried Jean-Marie, running towards
him. ' A viper ! You are bitten ! '
The Doctor came down heavily out of the cleft,
and advanced in silence to meet the boy, whom he
took roughly by the shoulder.
' I have found it,' he said, with a gasp.
' A plant ? ' asked Jean-Marie.
Desprez had a fit of unnatural gaiety, which the
rocks took up and mimicked. ' A plant ! ' he re-
peated scornfully. 'Well — yes — a plant. And
here,' he added suddenly, showing his right hand,
which he had hitherto concealed behind his back —
'here is one of the bulbs.'
Jean-Marie saw a dirty platter, coated with earth.
' That ? ' said he. ' It is a plate ! '
'It is a coach and horses,' cried the Doctor.
' Boy,' he continued, growing warmer, ' I plucked
away a great pad of moss from between these
boulders, and disclosed a crevice ; and when I
looked in, what do you suppose I saw ? I saw
a house in Paris with a court and garden, I saw
my wife shining with diamonds, I saw myself a
deputy, I saw you — well, I — I saw your future,'
he concluded, rather feebly. ' I have just discovered
America,' he added.
364
TREASURE TROVE
k But what is it ? ' asked the boy.
' The Treasure of Franchard,' cried the Doctor; and,
throwing his brown straw hat upon the ground, he
whooped like an Indian and sprang upon Jean-Marie,
whom he suffocated witli embraces and bedewed
with tears. Then he flung himself down among the
heather and once more laughed until the valley rang.
But the boy had now an interest of his own, a
boy's interest. No sooner was he released from the
Doctor's accolade than he ran to the boulders,
sprang into the niche, and, thrusting his hand into
the crevice, drew forth one after another, encrusted
with the earth of ages, the flagons, candlesticks, and
patens of the hermitage of Franchard. A casket
came last, tightly shut and very heavy.
' Oh what fun ! ' he cried.
But when he looked back at the Doctor, who had
followed close behind and was silently observing, the
words died from his lips. Desprez was once more
the colour of ashes ; his lip worked and trembled ; a
sort of bestial greed possessed him.
' This is childish,' he said. ' We lose precious
time. Back to the inn, harness the trap, and bring
it to yon bank. Run for your life, and remember —
not one whisper. I stay here to watch.'
Jean-Marie did as he was bid, though not without
surprise. The noddy was brought round to the spot
indicated ; and the two gradually transported the
treasure from its place of concealment to the boot
below the driving-seat. Once it was all stored the
Doctor recovered his gaiety.
365
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
' I pay my grateful duties to the genius of this
dell,' he said. ' Oh for a live coal, a heifer, and a jar
of country wine ! I am in the vein for sacrifice,
for a superb libation. Well, and why not ? AVe are
at Franchard. English pale ale is to be had — not
classical, indeed, but excellent Boy, we shall drink
ale?'
'But I thought it was so unwholesome,' said
Jean-Marie, 'and very dear besides.'
' Fiddle-de-dee ! ' exclaimed the Doctor gaily. ' To
the inn ! '
And he stepped into the noddy, tossing his head,
with an elastic, youthful air. The horse was turned,
and in a feAV seconds they drew up beside the palings
of the inn garden.
' Here,' said Desprez — ' here, near the table, so
that we may keep an eye upon things.'
They tied the horse, and entered the garden, the
Doctor singing, now in fantastic high notes, now
producing deep reverberations from his chest. He
took a seat, rapped loudly on the table, assailed the
waiter with witticisms ; and when the bottle of Bass
was at length produced, far more charged with gas
than the most delirious champagne, he filled out a
long glassful of froth and pushed it over to Jean-
Marie. ' Drink,' he said ; ' drink deep.'
' I would rather not,' faltered the boy, true to his
training.
' What ? ' thundered Desprez.
' I am afraid of it,' said Jean-Marie : ' my
stomach '
366
TREASURE TROVE
' Take it or leave it,' interrupted Desprez fiercely :
' but understand it once for all — there is nothing so
contemptible as a precisian.'
Here was a new lesson ! The boy sat bemused,
looking at the glass but not tasting it, while the
Doctor emptied and refilled his own, at first with
clouded brow, but gradually yielding to the sun, the
heady, prickling beverage, and his own predisposition
to be happy.
' Once in a way,' he said at last, by way of a
concession to the boy's more rigorous attitude, ' once
in a way, and at so critical a moment, this ale is a
nectar for the gods. The habit, indeed, is debasing ;
wine, the juice of the grape, is the true drink of the
Frenchman, as I have often had occasion to point
out ; and I do not know that I can blame you for
refusing this outlandish stimulant. You can have
some wine and cakes. Is the bottle empty ? Well,
we will not be proud ; we will have pity on your
glass.'
The beer being done, the Doctor chafed bitterly
while Jean-Marie finished his cakes. ' I burn to be
gone,' he said, looking at his watch. ' Good God,
how slow you eat ! ' And yet to eat slowly was
his own particular prescription, the main secret of
longevity !
His martyrdom, however, reached an end at last ;
the pair resumed their places in the buggy, and
Desprez, leaning luxuriously back, announced his
intention of proceeding to Fontainebleau.
' To Fontainebleau ? ' repeated Jean-Marie.
367
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
' My words are always measured,' said the Doctor.
'On!'
The Doctor was driven through the glades of
paradise ; the air, the light, the shining leaves, the
very movements of the vehicle, seemed to fall in
tune with his golden meditations ; with his head
thrown back, he dreamed a series of sunny visions,
ale and pleasure dancing in his veins. At last he
spoke.
' I shall telegraph for Casimir,' he said. ' Good
Casimir ! a fellow of the lower order of intelligence,
Jean-Marie, distinctly not creative, not poetic ; and
yet he will repay your study ; his fortune is vast,
and is entirely due to his own exertions. He is the
very fellow to help us to dispose of our trinkets, find
us a suitable house in Paris, and manage the details
of our installation. Admirable Casimir, one of my
oldest comrades ! It was on his advice, I may add,
that I invested my little fortune in Turkish bonds ;
when we have added these spoils of the mediaeval
Church to our stake in the Mahometan empire, little
boy, we shall positively roll among doubloons,
positively roll ! — Beautiful forest,' he cried, ' farewell !
Though called to other scenes, I will not forget thee.
Thy name is graven in my heart. Under the
influence of prosperity I become dithyrambic, Jean-
Marie. Such is the impulse of the natural soul ;
such was the constitution of primaeval man. And I
— well, I will not refuse the credit— I have preserved
my youth like a virginity ; another, who should have
led the same snoozing, countrified existence for
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TREASURE TROVE
these years, another had become rusted, become
stereotype ; but I, I praise my happy constitution,
retain the spring unbroken. Fresh opulence and a
new sphere of duties find me unabated in ardour and
only more mature by knowledge. For this pro-
spective change, Jean-Marie — it may probably have
shocked you. Tell me now, did it not strike you as
an inconsistency ? Confess — it is useless to dissemble
— it pained you ? '
' Yes,' said the boy.
'You see,' returned the Doctor, with sublime
fatuity, ' I read your thoughts ! Nor am I surprised
— your education is not yet complete ; the higher
duties of men have not been yet presented to you
fully. A hint — till we have leisure — must suffice.
Now that I am once more in possession of a modest
competence ; now that I have so long prepared
myself in silent meditation, it becomes my superior
duty to proceed to Paris. My scientific training,
my undoubted command of language, mark me out
for the service of my country. Modesty in such a
case would be a snare. If sin were a philosophical
expression, I should call it sinful. A man must not
deny his manifest abilities, for that is to evade his
obligations. I must be up and doing ; I must be no
skulker in life's battle.'
So he rattled on, copiously greasing the joint of
his inconsistency with words ; while the boy listened
silently, his eyes fixed on the horse, his mind seeth-
ing. It was all lost eloquence ; no array of words
could unsettle a belief of Jean-Marie's ; and he
8 — 2 a 369
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
drove into Fontainebleau filled with pity, horror,
indignation, and despair.
In the town Jean-Marie was kept a fixture on the
driving-seat, to guard the treasure ; while the Doctor,
with a singular, slightly tipsy airiness of manner,
fluttered in and out of caf£s, where he shook hands
with garrison officers, and mixed an absinthe with
the nicety of old experience ; in and out of shops,
from which he returned laden with costly fruits, real
turtle, a magnificent piece of silk for his wife, a
preposterous cane for himself, and a k£pi of the
newest fashion for the boy ; in and out of the tele-
graph office, whence he despatched his telegram,
and where three hours later he received an answer
promising a visit on the morrow, and generally
pervaded Fontainebleau with the first fine aroma of
his divine good-humour.
The sun was very low when they set forth again ;
the shadows of the forest trees extended across the
broad white road that led them home; the penetrating
odour of the evening wood had already arisen, like a
cloud of incense, from that broad field of tree-tops ;
and even in the streets of the town, where the air
had been baked all day between white walls, it came
in whiffs and pulses, like a distant music. Half-way
home, the last gold flicker vanished from a great
oak upon the left ; and when they came forth be-
yond the borders of the wood, the plain was already
sunken in pearly greyness, and a great, pale moon
came swinging skyward through the filmy poplars.
The Doctor sang, the Doctor whistled, the Doctor
37o
TREASURE TROVE
talked. He spoke of the woods, and the wars, and
the deposition of dew ; he brightened and babbled of
Paris ; he soared into cloudy bombast on the glories
of the political arena. All was to be changed ; as
the day departed, it took with it the vestiges of an
outworn existence, and to-morrow's sun was to
inaugurate the new. ' Enough,' he cried, ' of this
life of maceration ! ' His wife (still beautiful, or he
was sadly partial) was to be no longer buried ; she
should now shine before society. Jean-Marie would
find the world at his feet ; the roads open to success,
wealth, honour, and posthumous renown. ' And oh,
by the way,' said he, 'for God's sake keep your
tongue quiet ! You are, of course, a very silent
fellow ; it is a quality I gladly recognise in you —
silence, golden silence ! But this is a matter of
gravity. No word must get abroad ; none but the
good Casimir is to be trusted ; we shall probably
dispose of the vessels in England.'
' But are they not even ours ? ' the boy said,
almost with a sob — it was the only time he had
spoken.
' Ours in this sense, that they are nobody else's,'
replied the Doctor. ' But the State would have
some claim. If they were stolen, for instance, we
should be unable to demand their restitution ; we
should have no title ; we should be unable even to
communicate with the police. Such is the monstrous
condition of the law. 1 It is a mere instance of what
remains to be done, of the injustices that may yet
1 Let it be so, for my tale !
371
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
be righted by an ardent, active, and philosophical
deputy.'
Jean-Marie put his faith in Madame Desprez ; and
as they drove forward down the road from Bourron,
between the rustling poplars, he prayed in his teeth,
and whipped up the horse to an unusual speed.
Surely, as soon as they arrived, madame would assert
her character, and bring this waking nightmare to
an end.
Their entrance into Gretz was heralded and ac-
companied by a most furious barking ; all the dogs
in the village seemed to smell the treasure in the
noddy. But there was no one in the street, save
three lounging landscape-painters at Tentaillon's
door. Jean-Marie opened the green gate and led
in the horse and carriage ; and almost at the same
moment Madame Desprez came to the kitchen
threshold with a lighted lantern ; for the moon was
not yet high enough to clear the garden walls.
' Close the gates, Jean-Marie ! ' cried the Doctor,
somewhat unsteadily alighting. — • Anastasie, where
is Aline ? '
' She has gone to Montereau to see her parents,'
said madame.
' All is for the best ! ' exclaimed the Doctor fer-
vently. ' Here, quick, come near to me ; I do not
wish to speak too loud,' he continued. ' Darling, we
are wealthy ! '
' Wealthy ! ' repeated the wife.
' T have found the treasure of Fran chard,' replied
her husband. ' See, here are the first-fruits ; a
372
TREASURE TROVE
pine-apple, a dress for my ever-beautiful — it will
suit her — trust a husband's, trust a lover's taste !
Embrace me, darling ! This grimy episode is over ;
the butterfly unfolds its painted wings. To-morrow
Casimir will come ; in a week we may be in Paris —
happy at last ! You shall have diamonds. — Jean-
Marie, take it out of the boot, with religious care,
and bring it piece by piece into the dining-room.
We shall have plate at table ! Darling, hasten and
prepare this turtle ; it will be a whet — it will be an
addition to our meagre ordinary. I myself will
proceed to the cellar. We shall have a bottle of
that little Beaujolais you like, and finish with the
Hermitage ; there are still three bottles left. Worthy
wine for a worthy occasion.'
' But, my husband, you put me in a whirl,' she
cried. ' I do not comprehend.'
' The turtle, my adored, the turtle ! ' cried the
Doctor; an.d he pushed her towards the kitchen,
lantern and all.
Jean-Marie stood dumfoundered. He had pictured
to himself a different scene — a more immediate pro-
test, and his hope began to dwindle on the spot.
The Doctor was everywhere, a little doubtful on
his legs, perhaps, and now and then taking the wall
with his shoulder ; for it was long since he had
tasted absinthe, and he was even then reflecting that
the absinthe had been a misconception. Not that he
regretted excess on such a glorious day, but he made
a mental memorandum to beware ; he must not, a
second time, become the victim of a deleterious habit.
373
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
He had his wine out of the cellar in a twinkling ; he
arranged the sacrificial vessels, some on the white
table-cloth, some on the sideboard, still crusted with
historic earth. He was in and out of the kitchen,
plying Anastasie with vermouth, heating her with
glimpses of the future, estimating their new wealth
at ever larger figures ; and before they sat down to
supper, the lady's virtue had melted in the fire of his
enthusiasm, her timidity had disappeared ; she, too,
had begun to speak disparagingly of the life at Gretz ;
and as she took her place and helped the soup, her
eyes shone with the glitter of prospective diamonds.
All through the meal she and the Doctor made
and unmade fairy plans. They bobbed and bowed
and pledged each other. Their faces ran over with
smiles ; their eyes scattered sparkles, as they pro-
jected the Doctor's political honours and the lady's
drawing-room ovations.
* But you will not be a Red ! ' cried Anastasie.
' I am Left Centre to the core,' replied the Doctor.
' Madame Gastein will present us — we shall find
ourselves forgotten,' said the lady.
' Never,' protested the Doctor. ' Beauty and talent
leave a mark.'
' I have positively forgotten how to dress,' she
sighed.
* Darling, you make me blush,' cried he. ' Yours
has been a tragic marriage ! '
4 But your success — to see you appreciated,
honoured, your name in all the papers, that will be
more than pleasure — it will be heaven ! ' she cried.
374
TREASURE TROVE
'And once a week,' said the Doctor, archly scan-
ning the syllables, 'once a week — one good little
game of baccarat ? '
'Only once a week?' she questioned, threatening
him with a ringer.
' 1 swear it by my political honour,' cried he.
' I spoil you,' she said, and gave him her hand.
He covered it with kisses.
Jean-Marie escaped into the night. The moon
swung high over Gretz. He went down to the
garden end and sat on the jetty. The river ran by
with eddies of oily silver, and a low monotonous
song. Faint veils of mist moved among the poplars
on the farther side. The reeds were quietly nodding.
A hundred times already had the boy sat, on such
a night, and watched the streaming river with
untroubled fancy. And this perhaps was to be the
last He Avas to leave this familiar hamlet, this
green, rustling country, this bright and quiet stream ;
he was to pass into the great city ; his dear lady
mistress was to move bedizened in saloons ; his good,
garrulous, kind-hearted master to become a brawling
deputy ; and both be lost for ever to Jean-Marie and
their better selves. He knew his own defects ; he
knew he must sink into less and less consideration
in the turmoil of a city life, sink more and more
from the child into the servant. And he began
dimly to believe the Doctor's prophecies of evil. He
could see a change in both. His generous incredulity
failed him for this once ; a child must have per-
ceived that the Hermitage had completed what the
375
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
absinthe had begun. If this were the first day, what
would be the last ? ' If necessary, wreck the train,'
thought he, remembering the Doctor's parable. He
looked round on the delightful scene ; he drank deep
of the charmed night-air, laden with the scent of
hay. ' If necessary, wreck the train,' he repeated.
And he rose and returned to the house.
CHAPTER VI
A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION, IN TWO PARTS
The next morning there was a most unusual outcrv
in the Doctor's house. The last thing before going
to bed, the Doctor had locked up some valuables in
the dining-room cupboard ; and behold, when he rose
again, as he did about four o'clock, the cupboard
had been broken open, and the valuables in question
had disappeared. Madame and Jean-Marie were
summoned from their rooms, and appeared in hasty
toilets ; they found the Doctor raving, calling the
heavens to witness and avenge his injury, pacing the
room barefooted, with the tails of his night-shirt
flirting as he turned.
' Gone ! ' he said ; ' the things are gone, the for-
tune gone ! We are paupers once more. — Boy !
what do you know of this? Speak up, sir, speak
up. Do you know of it ? Where are they ? ' He
had him by the arm, shaking him like a bag, and
the boy's words, if he had any, were jolted forth in
376
A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
inarticulate murmurs. The Doctor, with a revulsion
from his own violence, set him down again. He
observed Anastasie in tears. ' Anastasie,' he said,
in quite an altered voice, ' compose yourself, com-
mand your feelings. I would not have you give
way to passion like the vulgar. This — this trifling
accident must be lived down. — Jean-Marie, bring me
my smaller medicine- chest. A gentle laxative is
indicated.'
And he dosed the family all round, leading the
way himself with a double quantity. The wretched
Anastasie, who had never been ill in the whole
course of her existence, and whose soul recoiled from
remedies, wept floods of tears as she sipped, and
shuddered, and protested, and then was bullied and
shouted at until she sipped again. As for Jean-
Marie, he took his portion down with stoicism.
' I have given him a less amount,' observed the
Doctor, ' his youth protecting him against emotion.
And now that we have thus parried any morbid
consequences, let us reason.'
' I am so cold,' wailed Anastasie.
' Cold ! ' cried the Doctor. ' I give thanks to God
that I am made of fierier material. Why, madam, a
blow like this would set a frog into a transpiration.
If you are cold, you can retire ; and, by the way, you
might throw me down my trousers. It is chilly for
the legs.'
' Oh no ! ' protested Anastasie ; ' I will stay with
you.'
* Nay, madam, you shall not suffer for your devo-
377
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
tion,' said the Doctor. ' I will myself fetch you a
shawl.' And he went upstairs and returned more
fully clad and with an armful of wraps for the
shivering Anastasie. And now,' he resumed, 'to
investigate this crime. Let us proceed by induc-
tion. Anastasie, do you know anything that can
help us ? ' Anastasie knew nothing. ' Or you, Jean-
Marie ? '
* Not I,' replied the boy steadily.
' Good,' returned the Doctor. ' We shall now
turn our attention to the material evidences. (I was
born to be a detective ; I have the eye and the
systematic spirit.) First, violence has been em-
ployed. The door was broken open ; and it may be
observed, in passing, that the lock was dear indeed
at what I paid for it : a crow to pluck with Master
Goguelat. Second, here is the instrument employed,
one of our own table-knives, one of our best, my
dear ; which seems to indicate no preparation on the
part of the gang — if gang it was. Thirdly, I observe
that nothing has been removed except the Franchard
dishes and the casket ; our own silver has been
minutely respected. This is wily ; it shows intelli-
gence, a knowledge of the code, a desire to avoid
legal consequences. I argue from this fact that the
gang numbers persons of respectability — outward, of
course, and merely outward, as the robbery proves.
But I argue, second, that we must have been ob-
served at Franchard itself by some occult observer,
and dogged throughout the day with a skill and
patience that I venture to qualify as consummate. No
37*
A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
ordinary man, no occasional criminal, would have
shown himself capable of this combination. We have
in our neighbourhood, it is far from improbable, a
retired bandit of the highest order of intelligence.'
' Good heaven ! ' cried the horrified Anastasie.
' Henri, how can you ? '
k My cherished one, this is a process of induction/
said the Doctor. ' If any of my steps are unsound,
correct me. You are silent? Then do not, I beseech
you, be so vulgarly illogical as to revolt from my
conclusion. We have now arrived,' he resumed, 'at
some idea of the composition of the gang — for I
incline to the hypothesis of more than one — and we
now leave this room, which can disclose no more,
and turn our attention to the court and garden.
(Jean-Marie, I trust you are observantly following
my various steps ; this is an excellent piece of educa-
tion for you.) Come with me to the door. No
steps on the court ; it is unfortunate our court
should be paved. On what small matters hang the
destiny of these delicate investigations ! Hey !
What have we here ? I have led you to the very
spot,' he said, standing grandly backward and in-
dicating the green gate. 'An escalade, as you can
now see for yourselves, has taken place.'
Sure enough, the green paint was in several places
scratched and broken ; and one of the panels pre-
served the print of a nailed shoe. The foot had
slipped, however, and it was difficult to estimate the
size of the shoe, and impossible to distinguish the
pattern of the nails.
379
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
' The whole robbery,' concluded the Doctor, ' step
by step, has been reconstituted. Inductive science
can no further go.'
' It is wonderful,' said his wife. ' You should
indeed have been a detective, Henri. I had no idea
of your talents.'
' My dear,' replied Desprez condescendingly, ' a
man of scientific imagination combines the lesser
faculties ; he is a detective just as he is a publicist
or a general ; these are but local applications of his
special talent. But now,' he continued, ' would you
have me go further ? Would you have me lay my
finger on the culprits — or rather, for I cannot pro-
mise quite so much, point out to you the very house
where they consort ? It may be a satisfaction, at
least it is all we are likely to get, since we are denied
the remedy of law. I reach the further stage in this
way. In order to fill my outline of the robbery, I
require a man likely to be in the forest idling, I
require a man of education, I require a man superior
to considerations of morality. The three requisites
all centre in Tentaillon's boarders. They are
painters, therefore they are continually lounging in
the forest. They are painters, therefore they are
not unlikely to have some smattering of education.
Lastly, because they are painters, they are probably
immoral. And this I prove in two ways. First,
painting is an art which merely addresses the eye ;
it does not in any particular exercise the moral sense.
And second, painting, in common with all the other
arts, implies the dangerous quality of imagination.
380
A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
A man of imagination is never moral ; he ontsoars
literal demarcations and reviews life under too many
shifting; lights to rest content with the invidious
distinctions of the law ! '
' But you always say — at least so I understood
you ' — said madame, ' that these lads display no
imagination whatever. 1
'My dear, they displayed imagination, and of a
very fantastic order too,' returned the Doctor, ' when
they embraced their beggarly profession. Besides —
and this is an argument exactly suited to your in-
tellectual level — many of them are English and
American. Where else should we expect to find a
thief? — And now you had better get your coffee.
Because we have lost a treasure, there is no reason
for starving. For my part, I shall break my fast
with white wine. I feel unaccountably heated and
thirsty to-day. I can only attribute it to the shock
of the discovery. And yet, you will bear me out, I
supported the emotion nobly.'
The Doctor had now talked himself back into
an admirable humour ; and as he sat in the arbour
and slowly imbibed a large allowance of white wine
and picked a little bread and cheese with no very
impetuous appetite, if a third of his meditations ran
upon the missing treasure, the other two-thirds were
more pleasingly busied in the retrospect of his de-
tective skill.
About eleven Casimir arrived ; he had caught an
early train to Fontainebleau, and driven over, to save
time ; and now his cab was stabled at Tentaillon's,
38i
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
and lie remarked, studying his watch, that he could
spare an hour and a half. He was much the man of
business, decisively spoken, given to frowning in an
intellectual manner. Anastasie's born brother, he
did not waste much sentiment on the lady, gave her
an English family kiss, and demanded a meal with-
out delay.
'You can tell me your story while we eat,' he
observed. ' Anything good to-day, Stasie ? '
He was promised something good. The trio sat
down to table in the arbour, Jean-Marie waiting as
well as eating, and the Doctor recounted what had
happened in his richest narrative manner. Casimir
heard it with explosions of laughter.
' What a streak of luck for you, my good brother,'
he observed, when the tale was over. ' If you had
gone to Paris, you would have played dick-duck-
drake with the whole consignment in three months.
Your own would have followed ; and you would
have come to me in a procession like the last time.
But I give you warning — Stasie may weep and
Henri ratiocinate — it will not serve you twice.
Your next collapse will be fatal. I thought I had
told you so, Stasie ? Hey ? No sense ? '
The Doctor winced and looked furtively at Jean-
Marie ; but the boy seemed apathetic.
' And then again,' broke out Casimir, ' what chil-
dren you are — vicious children, my faith ! How
could you tell the value of this trash ? It might
have been worth nothing, or next door.'
' Pardon me,' said the Doctor. ' You have your
382
A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
usual flow of spirits, I perceive, but even less than
your usual deliberation. I am not entirely ignorant
of these matters.'
' Not entirely ignorant of anything ever I heard
of,' interrupted Casimir, bowing, and raising his glass
with a sort of pert politeness.
' At least,' resumed the Doctor, * I gave my mind
to the subject — that you may be willing to believe —
and I estimated that our capital would be doubled.'
And he described the nature of the find.
' My word of honour ! ' said Casimir, * I half be-
lieve you ! But much would depend on the quality
of the gold.'
' The quality, my dear Casimir, was ' And the
Doctor, in default of language, kissed his finger-
tips.
' I would not take your word for it, my good
friend,' retorted the man of business. 'You are a
man of very rosy views. But this robbery,' he con-
tinued — ' this robbery is an odd thing. Of course I
pass over your nonsense about gangs and landscape-
painters. For me, that is a dream. Who was in
the house last night ? '
' None but ourselves,' replied the Doctor.
' And this young gentleman ? ' asked Casimir, jerk-
ing a nod in the direction of Jean-Marie.
' He too ' — the Doctor bowed.
' Well ; and, if it is a fair question, who is he ? '
pursued the brother-in-law.
' Jean- Marie,' answered the Doctor, ' combines the
functions of a son and stable-boy. He began as the
383
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
latter, but he rose rapidly to the more honourable
rank in our affections. He is, I may say, the great-
est comfort in our lives.'
' Ha ! ' said Casimir. ' And previous to becoming
one of you ? '
'Jean-Marie has lived a remarkable existence,
his experience has been eminently formative,' replied
Desprez. ' If I had had to choose an education for
my son, I should have chosen such another. Be-
ginning life with mountebanks and thieves, passing
onward to the society and friendship of philosophers,
he may be said to have skimmed the volume of
human life.'
' Thieves ? ' repeated the brother-in-law, with a
meditative air.
The Doctor could have bitten his tongue out He
foresaw what was coming, and prepared his mind for
a vigorous defence.
'Did you ever steal yourself?' asked Casimir.
turning suddenly on Jean-Marie, and for the first
time employing a single eyeglass which hung round
his neck.
' Yes, sir,' replied the boy, with a deep blush.
Casimir turned to the others with pursed lips,
and nodded to them meaningly. ' Hey ? ' said he ;
' how is that ? '
' Jean-Marie is a teller of the truth,' returned the
Doctor, throwing out his bust.
' He has never told a lie,' added madame. ' He is
the best of boys.'
' Never told a lie, has he not ? ' reflected Casimir.
384
A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
' Strange, very strange. Give me your attention, my
young friend,' he continued. ■ You knew about this
treasure ? '
1 He helped to bring it home,' interposed the
Doctor.
* Desprez, I ask you nothing but to hold your
tongue,' returned Casimir. ' I mean to question this
stable-boy of yours ; and if you are so certain of his
innocence, you can afford to let him answer for him-
self. — Now, sir,' he resumed, pointing his eyeglass
straight at Jean-Marie. ' You knew it could be
stolen with impunity ? You knew you could not
be prosecuted ? Come ! Did you, or did you
not?'
' I did,' answered Jean-Marie, in a miserable
whisper. He sat there changing colour like a re-
volving pharos, twisting his lingers hysterically,
swallowing air, the picture of guilt.
' You knew where it was put ? ' resumed the in-
quisitor.
' Yes,' from Jean-Marie.
* You say you have been a thief before,' continued
Casimir. ' Now, how am I to know that you are
not one still ? I suppose you could climb the green
gate ? '
1 Yes,' still lower, from the culprit.
'Well, then, it was you who stole these things.
You know it, and you dare not deny it. Look me
in the face ! Raise your sneak's eyes, and answer ! '
But in place of anything of that sort Jean-Marie
broke into a dismal howl and fled from the arbour.
8-2 B 385
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
Anastasie, as she pursued to capture and reassure the
victim, found time to send one Parthian arrow —
• Casimir, you are a brute ! '
' My brother,' said Desprez, with the greatest dig-
nity, ' you take upon yourself a licence '
' Desprez,' interrupted Casimir, ' for Heaven's sake
be a man of the world. You telegraph me to leave
my business and come down here on yours. I come,
I ask the business, you say "Find me this thief!"
Well, I find him ; I say " There he is ! " You need
not like it, but you have no manner of right to take
offence.'
' Well,' returned the Doctor, ' I grant that ; I will
even thank you for your mistaken zeal. But your
hypothesis was so extravagantly monstrous '
' Look here,' interrupted Casimir ; ' was it you or
Stasie ? '
' Certainly not,' answered the Doctor.
' Very well ; then it was the boy. Say no more
about it,' said the brother-in-law, and he produced
his cigar-case.
' I will say this much more,' returned Desprez :
1 if that boy came and told me so himself, I should
not believe him ; and if I did believe him, so implicit
is my trust, I should conclude that he had acted for
the best.'
* Well, well,' said Casimir indulgently. ' Have
you a light ? I must be going. And by the way,
I wish you would let me sell your Turks for you. I
always told you, it meant smash. I tell you so
again. Indeed, it was partly that which brought me
386
A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
down. You never acknowledge my letters — a most
unpardonable habit.'
'My good brother,' replied the Doctor blandly,
' I have never denied your ability in business ; but I
can perceive your limitations.'
1 Egad, my friend, I can return the compliment,'
observed the man of business. ' Your limitation is
to be downright irrational.'
■ Observe the relative position,' returned the Doc-
tor, with a smile. ' It is your attitude to believe
through thick and thin in one man's judgment —
your own. I follow the same opinion, but critically
and with open eyes. Which is the more irrational ?
I leave it to yourself.'
' Oh, my dear fellow ! ' cried Casimir, ' stick to
your Turks, stick to your stable-boy, go to the devil
in general in your own way and be done with it.
But don't ratiocinate with me — I cannot bear it.
And so, ta-ta. I might as well have stayed away
for any good I 've done. Say good-bye from me to
Stasie, and to the sullen hang-dog of a stable-boy, if
you insist on it ; I 'm off.'
And Casimir departed. The Doctor, that night,
dissected his character before Anastasie. 'One thing,
my beautiful,' he said, ' he has learned one thing
from his lifelong acquaintance with your husband :
the word ratiocinate. It shines in his vocabulary
like a jewel in a muck-heap. And, even so, he con-
tinually misapplies it. For you must have observed
he uses it as a sort of taunt, in the sense of to
ergotise, implying, as it were — the poor, dear fellow !
387
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
— a vein of sophistry. As for his cruelty to Jean-
Marie, it must be forgiven him — it is not his nature,
it is the nature of his life. A man who deals with
money, my dear, is a man lost.'
With Jean-Marie the process of reconciliation had
been somewhat slow. At first he was inconsolable,
insisted on leaving the family, went from paroxysm to
paroxysm of tears ; and it was only after Anastasie
had been closeted for an hour with him, alone, that
she came forth, sought out the Doctor, and, with
tears in her eyes, acquainted that gentleman with
what had passed.
' At first, my husband, he would hear of nothing,'
she said. ' Imagine ! if he had left us ! what would
the treasure be to that? Horrible treasure, it has
brought all this about ! At last, after he has sobbed
his very heart out, he agrees to stay on a condition —
we are not to mention this matter, this infamous
suspicion, not even to mention the robbery. On
that agreement only, the poor, cruel boy will con-
sent to remain among his friends.'
'But this inhibition,' said the Doctor, 'this em-
bargo — it cannot possibly apply to me ? '
' To all of us,' Anastasie assured him.
' My cherished one,' Desprez protested, ' you must
have misunderstood. It cannot apply to me. He
would naturally come to me.'
' Henri,' she said, ' it does ; I swear to you it
does.'
'This is a painful, a very painful circumstance,'
the Doctor said, looking a little black. ' I cannot
388
A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
affect, Anastasie, to be anything but justly wounded.
I feel this — I feel it, my wife, acutely.'
' I knew you would,' she said. ' But if you had
seen his distress ! We must make allowances, we
must sacrifice our feelings.'
' I trust, my dear, you have never found me
averse to sacrifices,' returned the Doctor very stiffly.
' And you will let me go and tell him that you
have agreed ? It will be like your noble nature,' she
cried.
So it would, he perceived — it would be like his
noble nature ! Up jumped his spirits, triumphant
at the thought. 'Go, darling,' he said nobly, 're-
assure him. The subject is buried ; more — I make
an effort, I have accustomed my will to these exer-
tions — and it is forgotten.'
A little after, but still with swollen eyes and look-
ing mortally sheepish, Jean-Marie reappeared and
went ostentatiously about his business. He was
the only unhappy member of the party that sat
down that night to supper. As for the Doctor,
he was radiant He thus sang the requiem of the
treasure : —
'This has been, on the whole, a most amusing
episode,' he said. ' We are not a penny the worse —
nay, we are immensely gainers. Our philosophy has
been exercised ; some of the turtle is still left — the
most wholesome of delicacies ; I have my staff,
Anastasie has her new dress, Jean-Marie is the
proud possessor of a fashionable kepi. Besides, we
had a glass of Hermitage last night ; the glow still
389
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
suffuses my memory. I was growing positively
niggardly with that Hermitage, positively niggardly.
Let me take the hint : we had one bottle to cele-
brate the appearance of our visionary fortune ; let
us have a second to console us for its occultation.
The third I hereby dedicate to Jean-Marie's wedding
breakfast.'
CHAPTER VII
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF DESPREZ
The Doctor's house has not yet received the com-
pliment of a description, and it is now high time that
the omission were supplied, for the house is itself an
actor in the story, and one whose part is nearly at
an end. Two stories in height, walls of a warm
yellow, tiles of an ancient ruddy brown diversified
with moss and lichen, it stood with one wall to the
street in the angle of the Doctor's property. It
was roomy, draughty, and inconvenient. The large
rafters were here and there engraven with rude
marks and patterns ; the hand-rail of the stair was
carved in countrified arabesque ; a stout timber
pillar, which did duty to support the dining-room
roof, bore mysterious characters on its darker side,
runes, according to the Doctor ; nor did he fail, when
he ran over the legendary history of the house and
its possessors, to dwell upon the Scandinavian scholar
who had left them. Floors, doors, and rafters made
a great variety of angles ; every room had a par-
390
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE
ticular inclination ; the gable had tilted towards the
garden, after the manner of a leaning tower, and one
of the former proprietors had buttressed the building
from that side with a great strut of wood, like the
derrick of a crane. Altogether, it had many marks
of ruin ; it was a house for the rats to desert ; and
nothing but its excellent brightness — the window-
glass polished and shining, the paint well scoured,
the brasses radiant, the very prop all wreathed about
with climbing flowers — nothing but its air of a well-
tended, smiling veteran, sitting, crutch and all, in
the sunny corner of a garden, marked it as a house
for comfortable people to inhabit. In poor or idle
management it would soon have hurried into the
blackguard stages of decay. As it was, the whole
family loved it, and the Doctor was never better
inspired than when he narrated its imaginary story
and drew the character of its successive masters,
from the Hebrew merchant who had re-edified its
walls after the sack of the town, and past the mys-
terious engraver of the runes, down to the long-
headed, dirty-handed boor from whom he had him-
self acquired it at a ruinous expense. As for any
alarm about its security, the idea had never pre-
sented itself. What had stood four centuries might
well endure a little longer.
Indeed, in this particular winter, after the finding
and losing of the treasure, the Desprez had an
anxiety of a very different order, and one which lay
nearer their hearts. Jean -Marie was plainly not
himself. He had fits of hectic activity, when he
39i
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
made unusual exertions to please, spoke more and
faster, and redoubled in attention to his lessons.
But these were interrupted by spells of melancholia
and brooding silence, when the boy was little better
than unbearable.
' Silence,' the Doctor moralised — ' you see, Ana-
stasie, what comes of silence. Had the boy properly
unbosomed himself, the little disappointment about
the treasure, the little annoyance about Casimir's
incivility would long ago have been forgotten. As
it is, they prey upon him like a disease. He loses
flesh, his appetite is variable and, on the whole,
impaired. I keep him on the strictest regimen, I
exhibit the most powerful tonics ; both in vain.'
' Don't you think you drug him too much ? ' asked
madame, with an irrepressible shudder.
' Drug ? ' cried the Doctor ; ' I drug ? Anastasie,
you are mad ! '
Time went on, and the boy's health still slowly
declined. The Doctor blamed the weather, which
was cold and boisterous. He called in his confrere
from Bourron, took a fancy for him, magnified his
capacity, and was pretty soon under treatment him-
self — it scarcely appeared for what complaint He
and Jean-Marie had each medicine to take at
different periods of the day. The Doctor used to
lie in wait for the exact moment, watch in hand.
' There is nothing like regularity,' he would say, fill
out the doses, and dilate on the virtues of the
draught ; and if the boy seemed none the better,
the Doctor was not at all the worse.
392
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE
Gunpowder Day, the boy was particularly low.
It was scowling, squally weather. Huge broken
companies of cloud sailed swiftly overhead ; raking
gleams of sunlight swept the village, and were fol-
lowed by intervals of darkness and white, flying rain.
At times the wind lifted up its voice and bellowed.
The trees were all scourging themselves along the
meadows, the last leaves flying like dust.
The Doctor, between the boy and the weather,
was in his element ; he had a theory to prove. He
sat with his watch out and a barometer in front of
him, waiting for the squalls and noting their effect
upon the human pulse. ' For the true philosopher,'
he remarked delightedly, 'every fact in nature is
a toy.' A letter came to him ; but, as its arrival
coincided with the approach of another gust, he
merely crammed it into his pocket, gave the time to
Jean-Marie, and the next moment they were both
counting their pulses as if for a wager.
At nightfall the wind rose into a tempest. It
besieged the hamlet, apparently from every side, as
if with batteries of cannon ; the houses shook and
groaned ; live coals were blown upon the floor. The
uproar and terror of the night kept people long
awake, sitting with pallid faces giving ear.
It was twelve before the Desprez family retired.
By half-past one, when the storm was already some-
what past its height, the Doctor was awakened from
a troubled slumber, and sat up. A noise still rang
in his ears, but whether of this world or the world of
dreams he was not certain. Another clap of wind
393
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
followed. It was accompanied by a sickening move-
ment of the whole house, and in the subsequent lull
Desprez could hear the tiles pouring like a cataract
into the loft above his head. He plucked Anastasie
bodily out of bed.
' Run ! ' he cried, thrusting some wearing apparel
into her hands ; ' the house is falling ! To the
garden ! '
She did not pause to be twice bidden ; she was
down the stair in an instant. She had never before
suspected herself of such activity. The Doctor
meanwhile, with the speed of a piece of pantomime
business, and undeterred by broken shins, proceeded
to rout out Jean-Marie, tore Aline from her virgin
slumbers, seized her by the hand, and tumbled down-
stairs and into the garden, with the girl tumbling
behind him, still not half awake.
The fugitives rendezvoused in the arbour by some
common instinct. Then came a bull's-eye flash of
struggling moonshine, which disclosed their four
figures standing huddled from the wind in a raffle
of flying drapery, and not without a considerable
need for more. At the humiliating spectacle Ana-
stasie clutched her night-dress desperately about her
and burst loudly into tears. The Doctor flew to
console her ; but she elbowed him away. She
suspected everybody of being the general public,
and thought the darkness was alive with eyes.
Another gleam and another violent gust arrived
together ; the house was seen to rock on its founda-
tion, and, just as the light was once more eclipsed,
394
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE
a crash which triumphed over the shouting of the
wind announced its fall, and for a moment the whole
garden was alive with skipping tiles and brickbats.
One such missile grazed the Doctor's ear ; another
descended on the bare foot of Aline, who instantly
made night hideous with her shrieks.
By this time the hamlet was alarmed, lights flashed
from the windows, hails reached the party, and the
Doctor answered, nobly contending against Aline
and the tempest. But this prospect of help only
awakened Anastasie to a more active stage of terror.
* Henri, people will be coming,' she screamed in
her husband's ear.
1 1 trust so,' he replied.
' They cannot. I would rather die,' she wailed.
' My dear,' said the Doctor reprovingly, ' you are
excited. I gave you some clothes. What have you
done with them ? '
' Oh, I don't know — I must have thrown them
away ! Where are they ? ' she sobbed.
Desprez groped about in the darkness. ' Admir-
able ! ' he remarked ; ' my grey velveteen trousers !
This will exactly meet your necessities.'
' Give them to me ! ' she cried fiercely ; but as soon
as she had them in her hands her mood appeared to
alter — she stood silent for a moment, and then
pressed the garment back upon the Doctor. ' Give
it to Aline,' she said — 'poor girl'
' Nonsense ! ' said the Doctor. ' Aline does not
know what she is about. Aline is beside herself with
terror ; and, at any rate, she is a peasant. Now I
395
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
am really concerned at this exposure for a person of
your housekeeping habits ; my solicitude and your
fantastic modesty both point to the same remedy —
the pantaloons.' He held them ready.
' It is impossible. You do not understand,' she
said with dignity.
By this time rescue was at hand. It had been
found impracticable to enter by the street, for the
gate was blocked with masonry, and the nodding
ruin still threatened further avalanches. But be-
tween the Doctor's garden and the one on the right
hand there was that very picturesque contrivance —
a common well ; the door on the Desprez side had
chanced to be unbolted, and now, through the arched
aperture, a man's bearded face and an arm supporting
a lantern were introduced into the world of windy
darkness, where Anastasie concealed her woes. The
light struck here and there among the tossing apple
boughs, it glinted on the grass ; but the lantern and
the glowing face became the centre of the world.
Anastasie crouched back from the intrusion.
* This way! ' shouted the man. ' Are you all safe?'
Aline, still screaming, ran to the new comer, and
was presently hauled head-foremost through the wall.
• Now, Anastasie, come on ; it is your turn,' said
the husband.
' I cannot,' she replied.
' Are we all to die of exposure, madame ? '
thundered Doctor Desprez.
4 You can go ! ' she cried. ■ Oh, go, go away ! I
can stay here ; I am quite warm.'
396
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE
The Doctor took her by the shoulders with an
oath.
' Stop ! ' she screamed. ' I will put them on.'
She took the detested lendings in her hand once
more ; but her repulsion was stronger than shame.
' Never ! ' she cried, shuddering, and flung them far
away into the night.
Next moment the Doctor had whirled her to the
well. The man was there and the lantern ; Anastasie
closed her eyes and appeared to herself to be about
to die. How she was transported through the arch
she knew not ; but once on the other side she was
received by the neighbour's wife, and enveloped in a
friendly blanket.
Beds were made ready for the two women, clothes
of very various sizes for the Doctor and Jean-Marie ;
and for the remainder of the night, while madame
dozed in and out on the borderland of hysterics, her
husband sat beside the fire and held forth to the
admiring neighbours. He showed them, at length,
the causes of the accident ; for years, he explained,
the fall had been impending ; one sign had followed
another : the joints had opened, the plaster had
cracked, the old walls bowed inward ; last, not three
weeks ago, the cellar-door had begun to work with
difficulty in its grooves. ' The cellar ! ' he said,
gravely shaking his head over a glass of mulled
wine. ' That reminds me of my poor vintages. By
a manifest providence the Hermitage was nearly at
an end. One bottle — I lose but one bottle of that
incomparable wine. It had been set apart against
397
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
Jean-Marie's wedding. Well, I must lay down some
more ; it will be an interest in life. I am, however,
a man somewhat advanced in years. My great work
is now buried in the fall of my humble roof; it will
never be completed — my name will have been writ
in water. And yet you find me calm — I would say
cheerful. Can your priest do more ? '
By the first glimpse of day the party sallied forth
from the fireside into the street. The wind had
fallen, but still charioted a world of troubled clouds ;
the air bit like frost ; and the party, as they stood
about the ruins in the rainy twilight of the morning,
beat upon their breasts and blew into their hands
for warmth. The house had entirely fallen, the
walls outward, the roof in ; it was a mere heap of
rubbish, with here and there a forlorn spear of broken
rafter. A sentinel was placed over the ruins to
protect the property, and the party adjourned to
Tentaillon's to break their fast at the Doctor's ex-
pense. The bottle circulated somewhat freely ; and
before they left the table it had begun to snow.
For three days the snow continued to fall, and the
ruins, covered with tarpaulin and watched by sen-
tries, were left undisturbed. The Desprez mean-
while had taken up their abode at Tentaillon's.
Madame spent her time in the kitchen, concocting
little delicacies, with the admiring aid of Madame
Tentaillon, or sitting by the fire in thoughtful abs-
traction. The fall of the house affected her wonder-
fully little ; that blow had been parried by another ;
and in her mind she was continually fighting over
398
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE
again the battle of the trousers. Had she done
right ? Had she done wrong ? And now she would
applaud her determination ; and anon, with a horrid
flush of unavailing penitence, she would regret the
trousers. No juncture in her life had so much exer-
cised her judgment. In the meantime the Doctor
had become vastly pleased with his situation. Two
of the summer boarders still lingered behind the rest,
prisoners for lack of a remittance ; they were both
English, but one of them spoke French pretty
fluently, and was, besides, a humorous, agile-minded
fellow, with whom the Doctor could reason by the
hour, secure of comprehension. Many were the
glasses they emptied, many the topics they dis-
cussed.
' Anastasie,' the Doctor said on the third morning,
' take an example from your husband, from Jean-
Marie ! The excitement has done more for the boy
than all my tonics, he takes his turn as sentry with
positive gusto. As for me, you behold me. I have
made friends with the Egyptians ; and my Pharaoh
is, I swear it, a most agreeable companion. You
alone are hipped. About a house — a few dresses ?
What are they in comparison to the Pharmacopoeia
— the labour of years lying buried below stones and
sticks in this depressing hamlet ? The snow falls ; I
shake it from my cloak ! Imitate me. Our income
will be impaired, I grant it, since we must rebuild ;
but moderation, patience, and philosophy will gather
about the hearth. In the meanwhile, the Tentaillons
are obliging ; the table, with your additions, will
399
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
pass ; only the wine is execrable — well, I shall send
for some to-day. My Pharaoh will be gratified to
drink a decent glass ; aha ! and I shall see if he pos-
sesses that acme of organisation — a palate. If he
has a palate, he is perfect.'
'Henri,' she said, shaking her head, 'you are a
man ; you cannot understand my feelings ; no
woman could shake off the memory of so public a
humiliation.'
The Doctor could not restrain a titter. ' Pardon
me, darling,' he said ; ' but really, to the philoso-
phical intelligence, the incident appears so small a
trifle. You looked extremely well '
' Henri ! ' she cried.
'Well, well, I will say no more,' he replied.
' Though, to be sure, if you had consented to indue
-A propose he broke off, ' and my trousers !
They are lying in the snow — my favourite trousers !'
And he dashed in quest of Jean-Marie.
Two hours afterwards the boy returned to the inn
with a spade under one arm and a curious sop of
clothing under the other.
The Doctor ruefully took it in his hands. ' They
have been ! ' he said. ' Their tense is past. Excel-
lent pantaloons, you are no more ! Stay, something
in the pocket,' and he produced a piece of paper.
' A letter ! ay, now I mind me ; it was received on
the morning of the gale, when I was absorbed in
delicate investigations. It is still legible. From
poor dear Casimir ! It is as well,' he chuckled,
'that I have educated him to patience. Poor
400
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE
Casimir and his correspondence — his infinitesimal,
timorous, idiotic correspondence ! '
He had by this time cautiously unfolded the wet
letter ; but, as he bent himself to decipher the
writing", a cloud descended on his brow.
' Bigre ! ' he cried, with a galvanic start.
And then the letter was whipped into the fire,
and the Doctors cap was on his head in the turn
of a hand.
' Ten minutes ! I can catch it, if I run,' he cried.
' It is always late. I go to Paris. I shall tele-
graph.'
' Henri ! what is wrong ? ' cried his wife.
' Ottoman Bonds ! ' came from the disappearing
Doctor ; and Anastasie and Jean-Marie were left
face to face with the wet trousers. Desprez had
gone to Paris, for the second time in seven years ;
he had gone to Paris with a pair of wooden shoes, a
knitted spencer, a black blouse, a country nightcap,
and twenty francs in his pocket. The fall of the
house was but a secondary marvel ; the whole world
might have fallen and scarce left his family more
petrified.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WAGES OF PHILOSOPHY
On the morning of the next day, the Doctor, a mere
spectre of himself, was brought back in the custody
of Casimir. They found Anastasie and the boy
8 — 2 c 401
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
sitting together by the tire ; and Desprez, who had
exchanged his toilette for a ready-made rig-out of
poor materials, waved his hand as he entered, and
sank speechless on the nearest chair. Madame
turned direct to Casimir.
' What is wrong ? ' she cried.
' Well,' replied Casimir, ' what have I told you all
along. It has come. It is a clean shave this time ;
so you may as well bear up and make the best of it.
House down, too, eh ? Bad luck, upon my soul ! '
' Are we — are we — ruined ? ' she gasped.
The Doctor stretched out his arms to her.
' Ruined,' he replied, ' you are ruined by your sinister
husband.'
Casimir observed the consequent embrace through
his eyeglass ; then he turned to Jean-Marie. ' You
hear ? ' he said. ' They are ruined ; no more pick-
ings, no more house, no more fat cutlets. It strikes
me, my friend, that you had best be packing ; the
present speculation is about worked out.' And he
nodded to him meaningly.
'Never!' cried Desprez, springing up. 'Jean-
Marie, if you prefer to leave me, now that I am
poor, you can go ; you shall receive your hundred
francs, if so much remains to me. But if you will
consent to stay ' — the Doctor wept a little — ' Casimir
offers me a place — as clerk,' he resumed. ' The
emoluments are slender, but they will be enough
for three. It is too much already to have lost my
fortune ; must I lose my son ? '
Jean-Marie sobbed bitterly, but without a word.
402
THE WAGES OF PHILOSOPHY
'I don't like boys who cry,' observed Casimir.
' This one is always crying. — Here ! you clear out of
this for a little ; I have business with your master
and mistress, and these domestic feelings may be
settled after I am gone. March ! ' and he held the
door open.
Jean-Marie slunk out, like a detected thief.
By twelve they were all at table but Jean-Marie.
' Hey ? ' said Casimir. ' Gone, you see. Took
the hint at once.'
'I do not, I confess,' said Desprez, * I do not seek
to excuse his absence. It speaks a want of heart
that disappoints me sorely.'
. 'AYant of manners,' corrected Casimir. 'Heart
he never had. Why, Desprez, for a clever fellow,
you are the most gullible mortal in creation. Your
ignorance of human nature and human business is
beyond belief. You are swindled by heathen Turks,
swindled by vagabond children, swindled right and
left, upstairs and downstairs. I think it must be
your imagination. I thank my stars I have
none.'
'Pardon me,' replied Desprez, still humbly, but
with a return of spirit at sight of a distinction to be
drawn ; ' pardon me, Casimir. You possess, even to
an eminent degree, the commercial imagination. It
was the lack of that in me — it appears it is my weak
point — that has led to these repeated shocks. By
the commercial imagination the financier forecasts
the destiny of his investments, marks the falling
house '
403
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
' Egad,' interrupted Casimir : ' our friend the
stable-boy appears to have his share of it.'
The Doctor was silenced ; and the meal was con-
tinued and finished principally to the tune of the
brother-in-law's not very consolatory conversation.
He entirely ignored the two young English painters,
turning a blind eyeglass to their salutations, and con-
tinuing his remarks as if he were alone in the bosom
of his family ; and with every second word he ripped
another stitch out of the air-balloon of Desprez'
vanity. By the time coffee was over the poor
Doctor was as limp as a napkin.
' Let us go and see the ruins,' said Casimir.
They strolled forth into the street. The fall of
the house, like the loss of a front tooth, had quite
transformed the village. Through the gap the eye
commanded a great stretch of open snowy country,
and the place shrank in comparison. It was like a
room with an open door. The sentinel stood by the
green gate, looking very red and cold, but he had a
pleasant word for the Doctor and his wealthy kins-
man.
Casimir looked at the mound of ruins, he tried the
quality of the tarpaulin. ' H'm,' he said, ' I hope
the cellar arch has stood. If it has, my good brother,
I will give you a good price for the wines.'
' We shall start digging to-morrow,' said the sentry.
' There is no more fear of snow.'
' My friend,' returned Casimir sententiously, ' you
had better wait till you get paid.'
The Doctor winced, and began dragging his in-
404
THE WAGES OF PHILOSOPHY
offensive brother-in-law towards Tentaillon's. In
the house there would be fewer auditors, and these
already in the secret of his fall.
' Hullo ! ' cried Casimir, ' there goes the stable-
boy with his luggage ; no, egad, he is taking it into
the inn.'
And sure enough, Jean-Marie was seen to cross
the snowy street and enter Tentaillon's, staggering
under a large hamper.
The Doctor stopped with a sudden, wild hope.
' What can he have ? ' he said. ' Let us go and
see.' And he hurried on.
' His luggage, to be sure,' answered Casimir. ' He
is on the move — thanks to the commercial imagina-
tion. '
' I have not seen that hamper for — for ever so
long,' remarked the Doctor.
1 Nor will you see it much longer,' chuckled
Casimir ; ' unless, indeed, we interfere. And by the
way, I insist on an examination.'
' You will not require,' said Desprez, positively
with a sob ; and, casting a moist, triumphant glance
at Casimir, he began to run.
' What the devil is up with him, I wonder ? '
Casimir reflected ; and then, curiosity taking the
upper hand, he followed the Doctor's example and
took to his heels.
The hamper was so heavy and large, and Jean-
Marie himself so little and so weary, that it had
taken him a great while to bundle it upstairs to the
Desprez private room ; and he had just set it down
405
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD
on the floor in front of Anastasie, when the Doctor
arrived, and was closely followed by the man of
business. Boy and hamper were both in a most
sorry plight; for the one had passed four months
underground in a certain cave on the way to Acheres,
and the other had run about five miles as hard as his
legs would carry him, half that distance under a
staggering weight.
'Jean-Marie,' cried the Doctor, in a voice that
was only too seraphic to be called hysterical, ' is
it ? It is !' he cried. ' Oh, my son, my son ! '
And he sat down upon the hamper and sobbed like
a little child.
' You will not go to Paris now,' said Jean-Marie
sheepishly.
' Casimir,' said Desprez, raising his wet face, ' do
you see that boy, that angel-boy ? He is the thief ;
he took the treasure from a man unfit to be intrusted
with its use ; he brings it back to me when I am
sobered and humbled. These, Casimir, are the
Fruits of my Teaching, and this moment is the
Reward of my Life.'
' Tiens,' said Casimir.
406
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